Joycelyn Elders
BARNES, STEVE
THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW Joycelyn Elders BY STEVE BARNES Only weeks ago, Joycelyn Elders—then the Surgeon General of the United States—had not one but two spacious offices: one at the Department...
...Elders: Yes, it was worth it to me...
...They concern me very greatly, as an absolutely strong, committed 30 percent of the people...
...But doctors are still at major risk...
...And I don't have any hard feelings...
...Elders: I probably was not politic enough to appreciate the potholes in the road, so I never even thought about it...
...Q: I notice, too, that the number of physicians receiving training in abortion procedures in medical school is pretty low...
...I think it has been resolved, and I think that the people that were fighting about this and carrying on about this were really people who fought against me from the beginning...
...Kevin has been convicted of a drug offense...
...You may teach your children, I may teach my children, but think of all the children who don't happen to have parents who can do that, who know how to do that, or who are willing to do that...
...They were going to listen to what I wanted to be about...
...He has now gone through a very intensive treatment program, and he's done extremely well, and I'm really very proud of Kevin and grateful to the program...
...Q: Can that be changed as long as the violence continues...
...Murray, there are some shades of truth...
...I do not want to do abortions, and I don't feel I should be made to do abortions...
...Having been in thirty-seven states last year, having talked to numerous different groups, I feel that the Republicans' campaign was an excellent, well-organized, well-financed, well-coordinated one, targeted toward their agenda...
...Now if Kevin goes to prison, he'll handle whatever comes about...
...Elders: Would I advocate masturbation to young people...
...Politically, I think it's power...
...Elders: I'm going to be the very best doctor I can be...
...They stop doing them not because they're opposed to abortion but for their safety...
...And if I can get somebody like you to help me, I'm going to write a book.M Steve Barnes is a journalist with KARK television in Little Rock...
...Q: Would you advocate it to young people...
...But I would certainly tell them that you've heard all of these things about what would happen to you, but that really nothing happens to you...
...Fiftytwo percent of children are unchurched, and the children we need to reach the most are often those same children who don't go to church...
...Now I feel that any doctor who's opposed to doing abortions should not have to do them...
...In fact, 86 percent of the counties in the United States have no abortion provider...
...Elders: No...
...These are some of the lies that have been perpetrated on our children...
...Elders: That's really very hard...
...She smiles often and easily—remarkable, perhaps, given the furor that has surrounded her since her abrupt departure from federal service, and her son's struggle with drugs, a source of continuing personal torment...
...That's true, isn't it...
...It concerns me an awful lot when they say, "Well, we won't pay for abortions...
...The university has been warm and receptive...
...Get on the school boards, so we can control the schools...
...I was about increasing the awareness of the American people and getting them involved...
...And less than 6 percent offer training in second-trimester abortions...
...marshals, been adequate...
...I wasn't about making policy...
...I was at the United Nations...
...We've got to organize and do some of the things they're doing...
...You have to be hit over the head with a broomstick or something...
...And I'm going to become a real advocate...
...So I feel that if we want to save our society, we've got to use all of the resources we've got, and the best resource we've got is our schools...
...It doesn't matter that sexuality issues are causing the greatest spread of AIDS and the HIV virus in our country...
...You did make some pretty pointed remarks about Catholic doctrine...
...Elders: I do feel I changed the nation's agenda, and I feel I pushed it ahead rather than back...
...But there's no question they're winning now, all over the country...
...Some of it____" She smiles...
...All of these other things are just palliatives, programs throwing good money after bad money...
...Elders: Yes, they do...
...The average cost of keeping a child in an orphanage for one year is $32,000...
...Q: Your advocacy of early-childhood education—your critics always seem to call it sex education, and that sets you on edge...
...Nobody spent more money than Oliver North...
...How many more of our health-care providers who care about women will have to be killed...
...I wasn't about giving out big grants...
...Nobody has produced the data to show that if you decriminalize it, you have to treat it...
...But early-childhood education to me means starting early to teach children about being healthy, happy children...
...Elders: No...
...Elders: But they were true...
...Her staff consists of a single secretary, though there are plenty of medical students and patients about...
...That's a real problem, and all we've got to really help is education...
...He remains free on an appeal bond but has returned to an in-patient treatment program...
...So, no, I didn't misspeak...
...How does it feel...
...Q: When you say "teach," what do you mean by "teach...
...It gives you a welfare check, it gives you what you need to survive...
...As long as you keep people poor and ignorant, you're in control...
...The elections in November put everybody on notice, but I don't quite see it like that...
...And the average amount that we give most single mothers to take care of a child is $3,000...
...But I've done most of the experiments I want to do, and I'm ready to come home, and I'm happy and I'm going to do the things that I've got left to do here, because to me this is home...
...And I don't feel we can ever go back to total ignorance again...
...Elders," ran in The New York Times Magazine in 1989...
...Elders: It's extremely low...
...Her office today in Little Rock is the size of a freight elevator...
...And so when I say "reward," I just think we should treat married and unmarried alike...
...I would still take on issues aggressively...
...But I really don't worry about that...
...Let me tell you why...
...I'm going to do a lot of public speaking...
...Stacked, shelved, and scattered about her office is the stuff of academe and her two controversial years in Washington: plaques, awards, citations, books, research monographs, clinical files, and mail—lots of mail...
...Correct...
...If you really don't start very early, if children aren't fed and get good nutrition very early, then these children grow up never knowing how to interact with other people...
...I don't see them doing any major overhaul or overturn, but I think women should be very concerned...
...For now there are speech requests and a book proposal, along with interns, endocrinology residents, and patients...
...Q: Looking back, was it worth it...
...AIDS is going up very rapidly in our heterosexual population, especially among black women and children...
...I know that I can go almost any place I want and be on a university faculty...
...I think we really need to start at birth...
...Lavish—his term—"lavish" resources on these children as an antidote to what is clearly an unstable, unworkable family situation...
...If you take a baby and just put him over there in a bed and ignore him for years, this will be a baby who's very much behind, who will never catch up...
...So I'll just say that if they sent me some signals, I didn't appreciate them, but even if they had not sent me signals and gone absolutely head-on, face-to-face, toe-to-toe, direct, I couldn't have done it...
...Elders: I don't mind talking about Kevin...
...Q: In terms of gender, pro-choice advocates are plainly concerned about the makeup of the new Congress, and what that could produce, even though we have a Supreme Court plainly not disposed to revisit Roe v. Wade...
...And I guess I'm just sad, really sad, that more young people cannot get the kind of treatment that Kevin has gotten...
...So these children are at risk...
...I would still be the kind of Surgeon General that I was, still speak out...
...Q: You tangled with what people thought were matters of the soul and the clergy, in particular with the Catholic church...
...And I think our politicians know better...
...But I've never felt like that...
...You can't pay people enough to be poor...
...Yet we spend most of our money on incarceration and very little on treatment...
...Has it colored your thinking, or shaped it, in any way on this issue...
...I think Kevin may have been dead by now, had this not happened...
...Elders: I feel it has not been adequate...
...Elders: I sense that this Congress will try very hard to tinker around the edges, to pacify the people who put them in...
...Q: Has the political response, in other words the action by the Justice Department, the use of U.S...
...I think that it says we feel that sexuality issues are things best left in the closet, that we shouldn't bring them out, shouldn't talk about them...
...He gave me an opportunity to serve as Surgeon General, one that I would not have had without him...
...There are enough physicians who would do abortions for women, but as long as their lives are being threatened, they have to have guards, they have to wear vests, they have to do all kinds of things...
...I feel the rest of us sat around and slept and really did not get that involved, and it showed...
...I disagree with that, but it's okay...
...So I disagree with them...
...Q: You're back in Arkansas...
...They start with the young people...
...Q: You're a free woman, aren't you...
...If we could just move away, get abortions out of individual clinics, approve the use of RU-486, we'd be better off...
...My family's here...
...I saw myself as the people's Surgeon General...
...We have to start by saying both parents must be involved...
...Elders: I think it says he felt he needed to move more toward the center...
...All you have to do is look: who is most likely to end up getting pregnant, to end up with AIDS...
...The question was did I feel that decriminalization of drugs would reduce the crime rate...
...Elders: No...
...I know the qualifications that I've got...
...I said my thoughts, and I was asked that question in a setting where I thought that was the appropriate answer...
...I disagree with their policy, but they've done a very good job...
...Joycelyn Elders is resolved, she says, to slow down—someday...
...Elders: To me, early-childhood education includes comprehensive health education...
...Or he felt he needed to go out and get a different group of people moved over to his political corner, and he felt I was detracting from that effort...
...Plus, she had a huge government-owned house and battalions of aides...
...Elders: I think it has made my thinking more clear—that I feel we need to do something different...
...Elders: That's right...
...They've got 30 percent of the population, in a place where only 39 percent voted in the last election—and when we get a 60 percent turnout, we feel that we've really done a big thing...
...Q: What's left for you to do...
...We're going to build orphanages...
...How to brush their teeth, how to respect one another, how to tell them there are certain places nobody is supposed to touch...
...Q: Your remarks about masturbation: did you misspeak yourself...
...Sex education is a part of the whole bailiwick of comprehensive health education...
...To me, that's okay...
...They're going to do exactly what you want them to...
...C. Everett Koop, with the right wing over public statements...
...So what we do is put them back on the street to do the same thing over and over again...
...Truth is really not absolute...
...I changed my mind one bit...
...Q: It is a very difficult thing for some parents to talk about, when they have a loved one, particularly a child, who is involved with either alcohol or drugs...
...You see, those things just don't add up and don't make sense...
...Q: You got into a bit of trouble, as did one of your predecessors, Dr...
...What good is reading, writing, and arithmetic if you're dead from AIDS...
...I feel we'd have a far better world and we could spend our money so much more wisely and we could make a great big difference in this country...
...Has that been resolved...
...I said it is a celibate-male-dominated church, a male-dominated legislature, and a male-dominated medical profession...
...We know that it costs fourteen times more to incarcerate somebody than it does to treat them...
...And I'm going to try and do some research, looking at problems that impact adolescents...
...That makes absolutely no sense...
...Elders: It certainly can't...
...Before my confirmation, I had more than one tell me, Dr...
...Why don't we put that amount of money into educating people, teaching more young people how to be parents, in giving their children a good start and getting day care...
...Elders: Obviously, it was very very painful for me...
...Elders: I enjoy being me...
...Q: This power struggle—is it class-based or is it gender-based...
...If I had the magic bullet and knew how to do it, you know I'd be out there screaming so loud until everybody came out to find out what I was saying...
...So if you are young and have no reliable job, let's say the young woman gets pregnant, and you decide to get married and have the baby, in our system that would be the dumbest thing in the world to do...
...I meant to say what I did...
...Children have got to have love and caring...
...And we fuss about paying for Medicaid, we fuss about paying for food stamps, yet we are talking about all these family values and virtues, and we're talking about building orphanages and taking children away from their families and away from their homes...
...Studies have been done: children who know more, whose parents have taught them about these things, or if they've learned it at school, are far less likely to engage in early sexual activity...
...Q: Does the right wing concern you now...
...And it was going down until 1986...
...We need care and love...
...Did you actually advocate that, or did you advocate study of it...
...In late January, she found forty-five minutes for The Progressive...
...Elders: I think it says there's a powerful group of people who are very vocal, and the rest of us sit on the sidelines and let things happen and don't say anything about it...
...It's the children who have not had this kind of education who get in trouble...
...Elders: My response to that is this: ignorance is not bliss...
...And how can this country tolerate itself when it talks about how it loves little fetuses and then goes and kills people...
...So after a while, you'll get smart enough to realize that the two of you can go and live together and can get your welfare check, and you can go on...
...But if it comes down to my vote whether you get in or not, you can count on it...
...I know he was addicted to drugs, but then to me that was an addiction, that was a medical problem, and he has worked extremely hard on that problem, and I'm very proud of him...
...Elders: I feel that would be a very expensive, rich-man's reward...
...Public Health Service...
...But I felt we should study it...
...Elders: I think it's both—both class and gender...
...They're usually poor, they're disproportionately black, but that's because blacks are disproportionately poor...
...If I had it to do all over again—knowing everything I know now—I would not do it differently.' Oliver North's campaign is an example...
...And I feel the more people become aware of a problem, then the more they will push for change...
...His profile, "The Crusade of Dr...
...I'll answer a lot of it—most of it, even," Elders says...
...It's total disrespect for women...
...They've got a far better organized machine to get their message out...
...A lot of places can provide food, clothing, and shelter, but we need more than food, clothing, and shelter...
...Q: When you used the term "reward" a minute ago did I hear any Professor Charles Murray in there at all...
...Well, there are studies that clearly show that to be true, that it would...
...If you're a young couple and you care about each other and decide to get married and have a child, our system absolutely denies you anything...
...You understand you have a relationship with each other and you get paid...
...Elders: What I mean by "teach," is to teach children that self-stimulation occurs, that if they're stimulating their private parts it should be done in private, and that they won't go crazy, hair won't grow on their hands, they won't go blind...
...I feel they tossed a few little nubbins over there to pacify people for the moment...
...Q: What was your reaction when you heard the news about the murders of abortion providers in Brookline and Pensacola...
...We know we're not winning the war now...
...So their health ministers are, in fact, talking about masturbation as an alternative source of sexual relief...
...Q: A frequent criticism of your agenda is that with the awareness of sex education and pregnancy prevention in the last ten, twenty, thirty years, the incidence of teen pregnancy has increased, the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases has increased, and precisely what you wish to prevent has been the result...
...Q: When you left for Washington, did you have any kind of foreboding that there'd be some potholes in the road...
...Elders: Well, when you're an individualist, you don't always get the subtle signals...
...Some members of the General Assembly and presumably some citizens expressed high outrage that you were returning to the Arkansas public payroll...
...Nobody wants to be on welfare...
...50 percent of the population are HIV-positive in some areas there...
...I'll know if I get paid at the end of the month...
...I think we have to start with education...
...The only place we've got where all the children go is school, and we don't want to teach our children, give them AIDS education, in school...
...It takes away their privacy...
...We never taught the parents...
...I don't advocate any sex practices...
...They've got a powerful weapon, and they're using it well...
...Q: Have we turned the corner on AIDS, at least in terms of awareness or warning signs...
...I think we really have to start educating children, starting early, to give them something to live for and hope for...
...What's next...
...We say, "Let the church do it...
...I don't know of anything that men would need that would expose them to this degree of invasion...
...I didn't plan to come back now, but I'm making the best of it...
...If they are married and they're suffering, well then— just as we would help an unmarried child-mother—we'd give the married couple help until they can get on their feet and start taking care of themselves...
...Where do you sense this Congress going...
...Q: Do you want to talk about your son Kevin...
...I think a Puritan ethic is at the root...
...So you've got a group with 30 percent who will all turn out...
...They felt, probably, that I shouldn't have been Health Director, that I shouldn't have been Surgeon General, and I shouldn't come back to the university...
...Q: The other hot button you pushed was the nation's drug war, when you talked about legalization—or decriminalization...
...Any prospect in that...
...Well, I thought, I didn't care what Washington wanted to be about...
...Elders: I think I'm on the payroll...
...Joycelyn Elders: Good...
...He gave me the opportunity to serve as Health Director here in Arkansas, a job I totally enjoyed...
...Elders, you're right, we know you're right, but I'm not going to vote for you on the first round...
...Elders: With all of us, with the things we say, and certainly with Mr...
...Because he went out and worked to get out the vote...
...In regard to Kevin, the problem that came about has been helpful...
...I shouldn't exist...
...That's not true in many orphanages...
...And I must thank Judge John Plegge for allowing him to be free on appeal for that program...
...We'd be better off if women could go see their health-care provider and people not be aware of what they're going there for...
...We've talked about the need to teach the three Rs, but what about the fourth R—responsibility...
...That would only reward and make a lot of people rich off of poor people...
...It was alleged that you had insulted the Catholic faith...
...No, I don't have any hard feelings...
...We don't have a vaccine, we don't have a medication that will cure it...
...So all we've got is education...
...And I'm glad of being me...
...I'm not advocating giving $32,000, and orphanages are failures...
...They've done it very well, and I applaud them for that...
...And I had my bully pulpit, and I was going to use it the way I felt that it should be used, for the benefit of the American people, and the politicians could say and do what they pleased...
...They seem to have difficulty regarding it as a medical problem and view it, or fear that others view it, as a moral question instead...
...Q: What does it say, though, that he found it necessary to let you go...
...It doesn't matter that sexuality issues are the greatest cause of poverty in our country...
...And we deny these children because we don't want our children to be taught by teachers what we've already taught ours...
...What I said was: look who's fighting the abortion movement...
...Many of the people there were from African countries...
...But Charles Robb beat him...
...You're back in a university setting, in an academic climate and a clinical one...
...I feel that the President, and the President alone, asked me to be the Surgeon General...
...We do nothing about that...
...If I had it to do all over again—knowing everything I know now—I would not do it differently...
...It was going down, among gay men, but it's now going up again in our young gay men...
...But it's to the detriment of the children of America and to our society...
...And if they do, they're far more likely to be responsible, to use appropriate methods of contraception or control...
...If you get married, all of a sudden you lose everything...
...There may be more unmarried pregnancies, but much of that is related to the policies we've had in place...
...Only 7 percent of our people warehoused in the prison system get any kind of treatment, and 60 percent of the prisoners are drug offenders...
...I've always felt that Kevin was really my son, and that if half the world had all of the fine, good qualities that Kevin has, the world would be a far better place...
...Q: Parents' fear seems to be: "If my child at age six, seven, somewhere in there, is made aware of sexuality, that is going to encourage premature sexual experimentation, which leads to pregnancy or disease, possibly even fatal disease...
...My children are here...
...Elders: I see it very commonly, and I find many parents really can't deal with it, or they disown their children, or they won't discuss it, or they're ashamed of it...
...We say, "Let the parents do it...
...I feel that was my role, what I was supposed to be doing...
...Elders and her husband, Oliver, are living in one of the rental properties they've acquired over the thirty-plus years of their marriage, but will soon return to their sprawling suburban homestead when the tenant's lease expires...
...It's control...
...None of us can even take care of our lunches for a month on the amount these people get to pay for food, clothing, and shelter...
...And I would still do it...
...We miss a golden opportunity...
...If you control them—control their minds, control their education—you don't really have to worry about what they're going to do...
...We're not even trying to do anything about it...
...THE PROGRESSIVE INTERVIEW Joycelyn Elders BY STEVE BARNES Only weeks ago, Joycelyn Elders—then the Surgeon General of the United States—had not one but two spacious offices: one at the Department of Health and Human Services, down the street from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and an aerie at the Maryland headquarters of the U.S...
...Talented and engaging as his mother, thirty-year-old Kevin Elders was convicted in July 1994 of selling cocaine...
...Q: Any hard feelings...
...The common denominator was human sexuality...
...Were you just thinking out loud...
...So what does that say about us...
...I feel I increased the awareness of the American people of the problems going on in our country...
...We know that we're getting further behind...
...And that's what I said, and I still do...
...And we still do not want to educate our children...
...He got people involved, and he attacked the issues head-on, and didn't go out there and try to out-Republican Oliver North...
...They had not talked about these difficult issues ever, and so we were going to talk about them now...
...I asked, where's our country going...
...Because of the reduction in our family-planning programs for poor women, it's startlingly up again...
...Q: Did you change the nation's agenda while you were there...
...Or is it possible that maybe you set it back by being a little less diplomatic than you could have been...
...Adolescent pregnancy was at its highest peak in 1956...
...If you are single and have a baby but no job, our system rewards you...
...They'll develop an action plan...
...Only 13 percent of programs for training obstetrician/gynecologists offer training in first-trimester abortions...
...Q: There was a bit of controversy when you returned to Arkansas...
...I feel very strongly about that...
...I would not be the Joycelyn Elders I am today without the things that the President did for me...
...Elders: I advocated study...
...Q: Clinton Administration officials say there were some signals sent you prior to your departure that maybe you could be a bit more politic...
...Elders: That's half lie and half truth...
...As for decriminalization of drugs, I didn't know the full impact it would have, all the things that are involved...
...What we're talking about now, instead, is not providing eighteen-year-olds and under with welfare, cutting out food stamps and WIC programs...
...Nobody worked harder and none of us knew more...
...Q: The drug issue has touched your family in a very personal way...
...Q: That's their criticism of you...
...We still refuse to talk about sexuality, because if we talk about it that means our kids will do it, even though the manifestations that they are doing it are so high...
...I think we have to start rewarding parents...
...Q* Murray's argument is that society's larger goals for all its citizens—black, white, yellow, red, whatever—would be better served by a serious orphanage program...
...I never saw myself as Bill Clinton's Surgeon General, or as Congress's Surgeon General...
...Q: How to change that...
...He says, fine, so it costs $32,000, maybe it ought to cost $40,000...
Vol. 59 • March 1995 • No. 3
