"Office of Population Affairs?"

While reading a post on Balloon Juice about G. W. Bush's latest abstinence-lovin', contraceptive-hatin' appointee to head up family planning at HHS, I was interested to notice her title: "deputy assistant secretary of population affairs."

Population affairs. It sounds like a phrase from another era, possibly from the Bureau of Indian Affairs circa most of the 19th century, when our fair government was removing the original inhabitants between the 49th and 32nd parallels from their homes. (I was interested to see that we still have a Bureau of Indian Affairs; the name has not been updated.) Or perhaps it sounds Soviet; I can imagine Kremlin apparatchiks in the department of population affairs gazing out from Moscow, musing on how best to quell rebellious Ukrainian kulaks.

What, I wondered, is the work of the Office of Population Affairs? As best as I can make out, it's to give away grant money. One grantee formulated the following stunning hypothesis: "...[R]elationships with partners, parents, and peers during adolescence will influence romantic and sexual relationship development...." Gee, ya think? The reward for this show of brain power was a healthy chunk of Adolescent Family Life grant money.

However, one Family Planning research grant went to "CONnecting with Teens About Contraceptive Use (CONTAC-U), whose purpose is to "reduce 1-year pregnancy rates among adolescents" by developing "a clinic-based intervention intended to increase contraceptive use...." It seems that AFL, which pushes abstinence, is a bit at odds with OFP. OPA must be an interesting place to work, to say the least.

What strikes me most forcibly about OPA is its intrusiveness into personal lives, especially those of the young and powerless (and in the case of one 2006 project, Mexican-American, or, as the grantee phrased it, "teen moms of Mexico origin"). For that matter, what strikes me about the whole conservative project is how willing its backers are to support intrusiveness into any and all areas of life. Before the 2000 election, one conservative friend stated that, for her, it was all about "personal responsibility." What I didn't say then, but thought later, was "What business of the government's is anyone's 'personal responsibility'? Who's going to means-test for that? You?" The Office of Population Affairs provides one answer to that question.