It’s bad news for Planned Parenthood and women’s health as Mike Pence got to fulfill one of his cherished dreams Thursday:
It’s not just that Republicans brought Pence in to pass this:
The National Women’s Law Center offers some background on just what Republicans were voting for. This was a vote to repeal an Obama administration regulation that “put states on notice that arbitrarily denying Title X family planning funds to providers, like Planned Parenthood clinics, for reasons unrelated to the quality of care provided is a violation of federal law.” The Senate voted—with Pence as tie-breaker—to let states deny Title X funds to providers for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of care they provide. Gosh, what ever could they be planning with this? Here are some of the services being threatened:
- Breast exams—which were provided to over 1 million women nationally at Title X sites in 2015;
- Other important confidential preventive care, including screenings for sexually transmitted infections (STIs)/HIV, and health education; and
- Contraceptive care and counseling that helped women avoid 904,000 unintended pregnancies, which would have resulted in 439,000 unplanned births in 2014.
In theory other organizations could step in to replace the care Planned Parenthood provides in areas this vote will hit, but in practice a Planned Parenthood location closing often means that care for low-income people just disappears from an area.
Bringing Pence in was not a good look, as Senate Democrats pointed out:
But Republicans don’t care about bringing in an extra man to vote to take quality health care away from women any more than they care about women having access to quality health care to begin with. This is who they are.
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