Debbie Hines has a straightforward HuffPo piece about the recent House vote to strip federal funding from Planned Parenthood. It includes this useful point:
It is estimated that 3 million women go yearly to 800 Planned Parenthood centers across America. 97% seek services for annual exams, breast and cervical cancer screenings, contraceptives, well woman health visits and health education. Well woman health care allows a woman to be assessed for other health issues such as diabetes and hypertension. And then Planned Parenthood ensures that they receive care elsewhere, if needed.
In other words, for many underinsured and uninsured women, Planned Parenthood is a primary health care provider.
So. Is this a big deal? There can't be that many American women without insurance, can there? Try 27% of all American women between 19 and 24. And a staggering thirty-eight percent of all black women, of any age. (This, at least, is what the National Institute of Reproductive Health says).
Hines also finds a nice irony in the fact that Rep. Dan Burton,* Republican of Indiana, has
... introduced a spending bill amendment aimed at promoting contraception use by horses to control and save the population of wild horses. Burton's amendment would prevent the Bureau of Land Management from holding wild horses in pens and offers "immuno-contraception" to the horses as an alternative.
Yes, friends, that's the novus ordo seclorum. No pap smears for poor women, but all the horse-condoms you could ask for.**
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*For the record, Rep. Burton has a 100% rating from the national Right to Life Committee and, ironically, an A rating from a handgun owner's lobby. He called Bill Clinton "a scumbag," and re-enacted the death of Vince Foster in his backyard with a pumpkin. Class act, right? He is also one of those autism-from-vaccination people we at the Egg love so much for their commitment to scientific rigor.
** And yes, we know that immuno-contraception uses chemicals, not condoms. It was a moment of rhetorical frenzy, okay?
2 comments:
Thank you.
Some of us insured women continue to go to PP to ensure that our insurance dollars go there. Because hey, if all those folk are about the free market, then this is a GREAT free-market choice. Right?
Abortion rights are basic; if you can't afford to breed them, why should you have to feed them? Being unable to limit your population, whether as a family or an individual or a society, is one of the biggest reasons why people remain poor.
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