This is the kind of story that makes me want to hop on the next plane to Missouri, bang on Governor Blunt's door, and give him a piece of my mind. Yesterday, MO Governor Blunt pulled funding from two Planned Parenthood clinics that provide free health screenings for poor women in the state.
Over the past five years, these two clinics provided breast cancer and cervical cancer screenings for 1,500 women in the state as part of the Show Me Healthy Women Program. Governor Blunt apparently thinks it's OK to play politics when women's lives are on the line.
Kellie Rohrbaugh, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood of Southwest Missouri, said: "Governor Blunt's sudden decision to cut a 15-year partnership to prevent cancer in southwest Missouri is a shocking, misguided act driven by political ideology rather than sound health care delivery."
But Blunt defended his decision by stating that, "Patients should not have to go to an abortion clinic to access lifesaving tests."
There's one major problem with the Governor's argument. The clinics that participated in the program have never provided abortions. Blunt spokeswoman Jessica Robinson responded later that "philosophically Planned Parenthood is known as an abortion provider." Forget philosophy. Screening for breast cancer and cervical cancer literally saves lives.
This Governor has a history of misleading the public about preventive family planning services. Yesterday he claimed that two Planned Parenthood family planning clinics in southwest Missouri are abortion providers when they are not. Last year he falsely claimed that pharmacists had been fired for denying women medication abortions when in fact they were fired for refusing to dispense emergency contraception. While the Governor continues to mislead the public, there's one fact you can count on. Planned Parenthood does more each day to provide family planning services than Governor Blunt will do in his entire career.
If you live in Missouri, you can tell Governor Blunt that cutting funding for these clinics is unacceptable.