The Pro Life People Who Revere Life Are Removing Health Care From 130,000 Women

Group May Need to Be Renamed “Pro Poor Health”

The people opposed to abortion rights regard themselves as morally superior.  They are invoking the power of government to deny women the right to control their own health care and reproductive decisions in the name of preserving the life of the unborn.  They consider themselves warriors in the battle to take the highest possible moral ground.

So it always comes as a surprise to everyone when these same people work to deny health care coverage to those women who cannot afford it.  Yes no matter how many times these “moralists” work to remove access to low cost, affordable quality healthy care for those who cannot otherwise afford it the rest of us are just amazed.  So here they go again in Texas.



A Typical Family in a Clinic
Texas Pro Family Republicans Will Be Denying
Them Health Care



Leticia Parra, a mother of five scraping by on income from her husband’s sporadic construction jobs, relied on the Planned Parenthood clinic in San Carlos, an impoverished town in South Texas, for breast cancer screenings, free birth control pills and pap smears for cervical cancer. 

But the clinic closed in October, along with more than a dozen others in the state, after financing for women’s health was slashed by two-thirds by the Republican-controlled Legislature.

The logic, if it can be called that, is that Planned Parenthood in a totally separate program not funded by any government money provides abortions.  Providing abortions is a perfectly legal activity, enshrined as a right for women by the Supreme Court.  But legislators in Texas don’t believe in rights when those rights go against what they want to impose on people, so they will forces tens of thousands of women out of low cost clinics.

The cuts, which left many low-income women with inconvenient or costly options, grew out of the effort to eliminate state support for Planned Parenthood. Although the cuts also forced clinics that were not affiliated with the agency to close — and none of them, even the ones run by Planned Parenthood, performed abortions — supporters of the cutbacks said they were motivated by the fight against abortion.

Now, the same sentiment is likely to lead to a shutdown next week of another significant source of reproductive health care: the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which serves 130,000 women with grants to many clinics, including those run by Planned Parenthood. Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have said they would forgo the $35 million in federal money that finances the women’s health program in order to keep Planned Parenthood from getting any of it.

The cruelty of all of this, and let’s make certain everyone understands that is exactly what to call this policy, is that despite creating severe suffering among low income women, the policy will not do anything to stop abortions.  Planned Parenthood will continue to exercise their right to provide abortions, and women will continue to exercise their rights to have access to abortions. 

The bottom line, the so-called moral majority, the so called values people, the so called respect for life folks will deny health care to a huge number of people just to push their political agenda.  So all of those pushing this policy need a new name, and here the suggestion is this, The We Don’t Care About You Minority, a name which best describes them.