A five-decade-old program that uses state and federal money to provide birth control, cancer screenings, sexually transmitted disease treatment and pregnancy testing for people of low income would be eliminated in a state budget the N.H. House passed last month.

The Senate Finance Committee will hold public hearings this week as part of the continuing process to arrive at a two-year state spending plan to take effect on July 1. Eventually, the House and Senate will compromise on a budget to be sent to Gov. Kelly Ayotte for her approval.

The House made a series of spending cutbacks in its plan, including eliminating the family planning program, which would cost $3.7 million over two years, with that price tag split between the state and the federal government.

Iain Watt, director of public health services at the N.H. Department of Health and Human Services, spoke to the finance committee last week about the importance of the services the program provides across the state to 2,500 people annually.

“It’s really critical that these services do get a second look from the Senate,” he said. “The diminishment or reduction or elimination of these [funds] would absolutely have a major impact on a number of areas.”

“As we have seen limitations or closing of birthing centers, people who are getting pregnant, women and families who are planning families, have such long drives and such distance to care, that absent these services, we really would see massive gaps in our service and coverage areas in the state.”

The state’s family planning program offers services through Coos County Family Health in Berlin, Lamprey Health Care in Nashua, the Community Action Program of Belknap-Merrimack Counties and Amoskeag Health in Manchester.

Watt said the family planning program has been essential in the state’s good performance in preventing teen pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, breast and cervical cancer deaths and preterm births.

Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, which has a clinic in Keene, also provides family planning services but no longer receives state funding.

N.H. Executive Council Republicans in recent years have declined to provide this funding because Planned Parenthood also provides abortions, even though state money was not used for this purpose.

Meanwhile, in late March, the Trump administration froze millions of dollars in family planning grants for groups including Planned Parenthood.

Kayla Montgomery, vice president of public affairs for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, said any funds the state invests in family planning is money well spent.

“When people can get the essential health care they need, when they need it, it leads to increased educational and economic opportunities, healthier babies, and it results in lower costs for taxpayers,” she said in a news release.

She also noted in an interview Friday that if the state eliminates the program, it is also turning away federal dollars that pay for more than half of the program’s costs.

Rep. Jess Edwards, R-Auburn, a member of the House Finance Committee, spoke before the House on April 10 about the decision to strike the state’s family planning program from the House’s budget proposal.

Ayotte has proposed retaining the program, but Edwards said there simply does not appear to be enough taxpayer money to do so.

Edwards also said people typically have alternative options for care aside from the low-cost services offered in the program.

“Those alternatives aren’t free,” Edwards said. “But, sometimes things in life are not free.

“These are adults that we are talking about that are using the family planning services. The people we prioritized money to first were like the Glencliff Home where you have a combination of mentally ill, developmentally disabled, and we have this huge shortfall in the amount of money we’ve been able to fund for their personnel.”

He also said those interested in supporting family planning can make private donations to such programs if they wish.

“In a world in which more resources were available, like I had done in two prior budgets, I would have funded family planning,” Edwards said. “But at some point you are just out of money and somebody is going to stand up and say, ‘Blame me.’

“So you can go ahead and blame me.”

The Senate Finance Committee will have a public meeting at 1 p.m. on Tuesday to finalize its proposed budget, and the full Senate will consider that spending plan on Thursday.

These articles are being shared by partners in the Granite State News Collaborative. For more information, visit collaborativenh.org.