Last week, as most Americans busily prepared for Thanksgiving, President Bush chose another extremist ideologue to a powerful post. To lead Title X, the nation's family planning program, Bush selected Eric Keroack, a fanatic who doesn't believe in birth control. Keroack is notorious for peddling bad science to spin his anti-sex education, anti-contraception hardliner views.

Keroack is currently the medical director for A Woman's Concern, a network of so-called Christian "crisis pregnancy health centers" in the greater Boston area. In addition to their strict anti-choice policies, under Keroack's supervision, AWC health centers will not even distribute, encourage the use of or offer referrals for contraceptive drugs and devices.

Advocating abstinence until marriage, Keroack and his group are even opposed to dispensing contraception to married women! Instead, their Web site describes contraception as "demeaning to women" and "adverse to human health and happiness."

Given that the vast majority of American women welcome and use contraception, the White House searched high and low to find someone with such crazy views. It's an obvious effort to placate Bush's ultra right-wing base, which is still smarting from the recent election results.

Yet the appointment, which does not require Senate approval, has unfurled a wave of condemnation across the country; even The Salt Lake Tribune is calling for the Keroack nomination to be withdrawn.

It would be an affront to women to elevate Keroack to such an important post.

"Appointing an individual who has crusaded against birth control to head the nation's family planning program makes a mockery of women's health," said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. It's like giving the worst polluter the top post at the Environmental Protection Agency.

More than 30 years ago, with strong bipartisan support, Congress created Title X, the first federal program dedicated to the provision of family planning services. Since then, Title X has enabled millions of women to plan their pregnancies, prevent unintended births and receive desperately needed reproductive health care by building a network of high-quality, low-cost family planning clinics.

Last year alone, Title X enabled 126,000 women in Washington state to obtain free or subsidized contraception, cancer screening and critical health care services.

It is mind boggling to contemplate what Keroack will unleash on American women if he takes the reins of Title X. Will he divert government funds to extremist groups? Will he close down family planning clinics and replace them with "Christian" counseling centers? That's what happens when the proverbial fox is set loose in the chicken coop.

It has already happened globally: With the nod from Bush, extremists have hijacked international health efforts, diverting funds to abstinence-only efforts and spinning misinformation about condom use to derail developing countries' efforts to prevent HIV transmission.

Now Bush's appointment of Keroack threatens to bring such ideological quackery home. The last thing this country needs is a zealot who scorns contraception in charge of women's health.

Roberta Riley is consulting counsel for legal and international affairs of Planned Parenthood of Western Washington.

© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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