Today, Gov. Henry McMaster continued his assault on the poor and working class women and their families.
As reported in The Post and Courier, McMaster “issued an abrupt executive order on Friday cutting off all public funding to health care providers affiliated with abortion clinics in South Carolina. In the order, he also directed the South Carolina Medicaid agency to seek permission from the federal government to exclude abortion clinics from the state's Medicaid provider network.”
No state or federal money is used to provide abortions in South Carolina, so this appears to be no more than an appeal for free publicity by the failing McMaster campaign.
But McMaster isn’t concerned about results, just appealing to his socially conservative base. No matter the consequences.
And the consequences will be cutting off access to birth control, cancer screenings, and other preventive care for mostly low and moderate income families.
According to our friends at Planned Parenthood, “Those hurt the most would be those struggling to get by and also those who already face barriers to accessing health care — especially people of color, people with low to moderate incomes, as well as people who live in rural areas.”
McMaster’s unconstitutional order will also probably impact already struggling hospitals across the state. Many South Carolina hospitals perform abortions. (In fact, there are more hospitals in SC providing abortions than abortion clinics.) It appears that McMaster’s order will jeopardize tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid funding to these hospitals.
But none of this matters to McMaster, as long as he can get a few free headlines in SC newspapers.
Enough is enough! Tell McMaster to rescind his unconstitutional order attacking the health of women, men and teens across South Carolina.
Click here to sign the petition.