40 years of Title X is enough

The Family in America: Richard M. Nixon and George H. W. Bush sold Title X to the public on the theory that “advance planning” called for dispensing heavy doses of contraception to those “who want them but cannot afford them” in order to reduce “unwanted and untimely childbearing” and enhance the “effective planning” of families. A similar argument was set forth when Congress tapped the resources of Medicaid for family-planning purposes in 1972. Would this untested theory deliver on its hype, or would the McNamara school of public policy—with its fixation on abstract rational planning—backfire in the real world just as it did with the War on Poverty?