While U.S. Republicans proceed with the ongoing inquisition of Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during the admittedly partisan and seemingly endless Benghazi hearings, there is another series of relentless witch hunts taking place in Washington D.C. and in the red states. The Republican Party has ratcheted up its persecution of Planned Parenthood and the 2.7 million patients who uses its services.
Texas is among the most aggressive in punishing the poor, especially poor woman and Planned Parenthood. Its rationale is based on a fraudulent video of an abortion that never happened. The news media have confirmed the video is a dishonest sham. But hey. Texas Republicans operate more under the guise of talking points as handed down by their puppet masters. Facts. Smacks. The right wing propaganda is such that a prominent minister in a big and diverse city like Houston will quote cable TV Fox's Bill O'Reilly as a knowledgeable expert on evil and BlackLivesMatter.
According to right wing leaders, life is cheap in Texas if one has the misfortune to be poor. Because Governor Greg Abbott, a proclaimed pro-life Catholic, refuses to accept federally expanded Medicaid, 766,000 Texans will be stripped from access to affordable healthcare. Pro-life essentially means anti-abortion, period, to "pro-life" Catholics like the Governor.
And if one is a poor woman, one should be prepared to no longer have access to affordable healthcare services provided by Planned Parenthood.
Several days ago a federal judge blocked Louisiana Governor Jindal's attempt to defund Planned Parenthood in the state. Did this restraining order send a message to Texas Republican lawmakers? Of course not. If anything the Texas GOP demonstrates its contempt for the federal courts when it does not agree with particular rulings. Within a day of the Louisiana restraining order Texas GOP leaders announced the state cut will Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood.
So, what happens when nearly 200,000 Texas women have or will lose access to affordable healthcare coverage?
How Texas Lawmakers Continue to Undermine Women's Health.
As noted in the Houston Chronicle's article above, 766,000 are falling through the healthcare coverage gap because the Governor refuses to accept federally expanded Medicaid. But Texas has always been stingy when it comes to providing services to its citizens.
For years, Texas has had the highest proportion of uninsured individuals overall, and for adult women specifically, of any state. In 2013, one in five Texans had no health insurance of any kind, including 2.1 million adult women.
The impact on women is stark.
Beyond limited access to health coverage, Texas consistently has lackluster health indicators — particularly with regard to sexual and reproductive health care. Yet, at seemingly every turn, state lawmakers continue to implement neglectful, or even hostile, policies that hinder access to affordable sexual and reproductive health care and information, especially among low-income Texas women and teens.
Those policies include the state’s ongoing refusal to adopt the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of full-benefit Medicaid; its frequent attacks on family planning funding and providers; its dogged insistence on an abstinence-only approach to sex education; and its escalating restrictions on access to abortion.
A whopping
55% of Texas women have at least one obstacle to reproductive healthcare.
Indeed, a recent study found that 55 percent of Texas women surveyed now face at least one barrier to reproductive health care, including affordability of services and access to providers with whom they feel comfortable.
While access to reproductive healthcare was relatively easy and uncomplicated prior to 2011 it was this particular year that the Texas GOP decided to do all it could to make abortions impossible in the state. The draconian cuts to women's healthcare providers, including Planned Parenthood, have been devastating.
The consequences of that decision are now clear. According to the state’s recent report, in nearly every part of the state, the Texas Women’s Health Program served fewer women in 2013 (its first year as an entirely state-run program) than it served in 2011 (before the new restrictions took effect).
Statewide, there was a 9 percent decrease in enrollees, a 26 percent decrease in Medicaid claims and a 54 percent decline in contraceptive claims specifically, indicating a considerable decline in service utilization among enrollees. Further, from 2011 to 2013, Texas saw a 67 percent decline in net savings from family planning. (These government savings accrue from helping women and couples prevent unplanned births where the maternity and infant care would have been paid for by Medicaid.)
GOP right wing policies are unforgiving for poor women.
Low-income women are particularly likely to rely on such safety-net sources for their sexual and reproductive health care; that is especially true for women of color and immigrant women, of which Texas has particularly large proportions. Additionally, women specifically seek care for issues having to do with sex and birth control at health centers that specialize in family planning services — providers the Texas Women’s Health Program now largely excludes.
Even in 2012, only 13 percent of the need for publicly funded family planning services in Texas was met by safety-net family planning centers, the lowest proportion in the country — and less than half the national average.
The consequences of saving the fetus while abandoning the born child. The Texas GOP has also cut the social safety net for many low income families. The fetus might be saved but the born child will be punished if that child was born into an impoverished family.
Overall, thousands fewer Texas women received any given contraceptive method through the program in 2013 compared to 2011. Ironically, this comes as Guttmacher data shows a rising need for publicly funded family planning services in the state, driven by an increase in the number of poor and low-income women: From 2000 to 2012, the number of Texas woman needing publicly supported contraceptive care grew by 34 percent, to more than 1.7 million. And, nearly half (45 percent) of these women were uninsured in 2012, the highest proportion in the nation.
Notably, even before Texas lawmakers so drastically limited women’s access to contraceptive care, the state faced high rates of unintended pregnancy. In 2010, there were 56 unintended pregnancies per 1,000 Texas women, substantially above the national median.
Restricting access to family planning services can only exacerbate women’s risk of unintended pregnancy and limit the ability of women and families to achieve other social and economic life goals. Plus, nationwide, every public dollar invested in family planning services results in $7 in taxpayer savings.
When religion co-mingles with with uber conservative policies. No one is allowed to have sex until they are married. Oh really? According to whom? The abstinence only programs, by the way, have been one huge whopping failure. Unintended pregnancies have been on the rise ever since this hair brained policy was implemented. It would be far more rational and realistic to install condom machines in high school restrooms. But the Texas GOP is not capable of doing anything rational that contradicts with its narrow conservative ideology and its fundamentalist Christian beliefs.
Texas lawmakers also continue to carry out an ideological campaign against young people’s access to honest information on sex, including pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STI) prevention.
In March, for example, State Rep. Stuart Spitzer (R) won the House’s approval in moving $3 million from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/STI prevention programs to funding for abstinence-only-until-marriage education, stating, “My goal is for everyone to be abstinent until they are married.” (Whether this maneuver will become law is unclear; it is still pending before the state legislature.)
Like Louisiana Texas will come up against the federal court where defunding Planned Parenthood is concerned. It seems to me that Texas taxpayers have to pony up far too much for the seemingly endless GOP witch hunts that hurt more than help most of us. While Attorney General Greg Abbott would boast that he would go to work every morning to sue Obama. He did and lost most of his cases at great taxpayer expense. Most were nothing more than ways in which to stick it to the first African American President. Abbott's successor, indicted felon Ken Paxton, is doing the same. Sue, baby, sue. It's only taxpayer bucks.
I've said it before and I'll say it again until this far right influence on the state breaks. There is only one way out of this mess.
Vote for crying out loud.
The reason Texas has one of the most restrictive Jim Crow Voter ID law in place is because the boys and girls in Austin are terrified of the possibility that a majority of us just might have had enough. Eventually we are going to want to throw the bums out. Each and every one of them. Sooner is better than later.
When Democrats vote Democrats win. When Democrats are in charge, good stuff happens for most of us instead of for some of us. No one will be talking about who's allowed to have sex, either.
Update: Apparently Texas state officials have raided Planned Parenthood facilities recently. When fascism comes to Texas it will come wrapped in a Jim Crow flag while carrying a cross.
