Behind closed doors with a select audience of supporters, President Trump signed an executive order that will allow states to divert Title X federal dollars used for women’s health care away from the Planned Parenthood clinics that provide those services.
President Trump signed legislation Thursday allowing states to withhold federal family planning dollars from clinics that provide abortion services, a move that could deprive Planned Parenthood and several other family groups of tens of millions in funding.
Title X funding does not pay for abortions, because that is barred under federal law, but it does fund birth control, cancer screenings and both tests and treatment for sexually-transmitted diseases.
So once again we have a bunch of old MEN in Washington deciding what’s good for women. And the states get to decide now, but it’s probably a similar cabal of old men who can’t get to Washington.
The rule tossed out by Trump required state and local governments to distribute federal dollars for family planning services, including contraception, sexually transmitted diseases, fertility, pregnancy care, and breast and cervical cancer screening, to qualified health providers, irrespective of whether the providers also performed abortions.
Republicans and abortion opponents said the new law will let states divert money now going to groups that perform abortions to organizations that do not.
Seema Verma, who oversees Medicare and Medicaid, said after Trump signed the bill in the Oval Office that the administration wants states to decide what’s best for them and the people they serve.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, said the change will lead to better care for women and girls. She said the law “simply ensures that states are not forced to fund an abortion business with taxpayer dollars.” She said states will now have the option to spend federal family planning funds on comprehensive health care clinics.
Planned Parenthood is certainly at risk here. As they were if the American Health Care Act had been passed (it’s still breathing so keep an eye on it). Without federal dollars it may not be able to continue to provide these crucial health care services. And how many comprehensive health care clinics are out there in each state? Are there enough to pick up the slack? Are they big enough to accommodate all of the potential new clients? Why isn’t there a mandate in this order to the states insuring they provide or identify ‘alternative health care clinics’?
So where’s the dirty little secret? If Planned Parenthood is starved into oblivion by the removal of federal funds…what will survive? Just the abortion clinics will survive, because they rely on private dollars. So the very thing the right wing is trying to kill will survive while millions of American women will suffer from lack of proper medical care. And this mean even increase the necessity for abortions if we lose access to family planning services.
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