By defunding and even eliminating family planning programs, states are putting tens of thousands of poor women and teenagers at risk, and not just for unwanted pregnancies. Many family planning clinics also provide screening tests for diseases like diabetes and offer gynecological exams that can include tests for cervical cancer or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).
But those options are rapidly shrinking for many women. New Jersey and Montana no longer have family planning programs, while New Hampshire cut funding for its program by 57%. The worst effects have been felt in Texas where massive state funding cuts caused half of state-supported family planning clinics to shut their doors.
A number of Texas representatives pointed to budget shortfalls as a reason to make these cuts, even though the state's budget office predicts that nearly 20,000 more births will result costing the state $98 million in prenatal, maternity and infant care, far more than the cuts are saving.
When these financial implications were brought to the attention of Representative Wayne Christian, a Texas Republican, he responded: "We value a human life more than just the cost."
Tell that to the hundreds of women who canceled appointments at the Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas which started charging a $25 co-pay to everyone. How can we expect women who can't afford $25 for a doctor's visit to care for a child?
In addition, Texas has excluded Planned Parenthood from participating in the Women's Health Program, an extension of the Medicaid program that provides $9 in federal funds for every $1 spent by the state of Texas. As a result, the feds have informed Texas that the state is violating federal guidelines, putting this funding at risk and further denying health care and family planning services to an additional 130,000 women.
Only Maryland and Washington expanded funding for family planning services to cover women at 200% of the federal poverty threshold.
Put this together with the fact that 2011 was a record for legislation restricting abortion or putting up roadblocks to the procedure (triple the number enacted in 2010), and it seems no exaggeration to say that a war on women's reproductive rights is heating up again in this country.
We are used to the controversy over abortion, which has raged every since the landmark Roe v. Wade decision. But these new attacks on contraception are even more worrisome. Conservatives are cloaking these funding cuts under the guise of fiscal responsibility, but how responsible is it to put the greatest burden of accessing and paying for birth control on the most vulnerable women in our society -- the poor and the young?
What purpose does it serve to increase the risk of unplanned pregnancies among the very women who are least financially equipped to raise a child? And why would any moral person want to increase the likelihood of women seeking abortions because they cannot access family planning services.
These are questions that need to be raised, particularly as we enter an election season where Republican candidates are attacking women's reproductive rights and calling this "family values." Valuing family means giving people the means to choose if and when to start a family in the first place.
As someone who has supported women's reproductive rights since I was a teenager, it is exhausting and disheartening to have to fight these battles over and over again, but we owe it to those women whose voices are not heard, either by politicians or by those members of society who have the means to plan their own families but are not willing to help others do the same.
If we allow any woman to lose her reproductive rights in this country, all of us suffer with her because these are the most fundamental rights a woman can have.
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