Last week, Susan Orr, the administration-appointed Assistant Deputy Secretary of Population Affairs, resigned from her post. Orr's job was to oversee family planning services and programs for low-income citizens, and, ironically (but not surprisingly), Orr's professional history indicates that she has long been an opponent of contraceptive access.

In other words, Bush's family planning official was against family planning. Bush's strategy for eliminating programs that go against conservative ideology seems to be to appoint people who don't believe in those programs so that, essentially, nothing gets done. These appointments appease the conservative bigwigs who continue to defend Bush despite his incessant failures.

But the people who lose out? Low-income citizens who rely on these programs to gain access to contraceptives, reproductive education and health services. Teenage girls who, in the absence of comprehensive sex ed, now experience a one in four prevalence of sexual disease. In other words, the people who have been losing out in the past are continuing to lose out, and the folks who have historically been appeased for their power continue to be appeased.

It is essentially undermining the security of these folks to strip them of the resources necessary to protect their bodies and control their futures. In a land where success hinges on the ability to shape your own fate, it is irresponsible to deny our citizens the right to choose their own paths, and to leave peoples' lives up to chance.

Why did Orr resign? It is unknown, but maybe she finally saw her position for what it was: a placeholder to stall progress and pander to the conservative ideology. Or maybe she just wanted to take time off to write a sequel to her article, "Real Women Stay Married."