Conservative Republicans’ war on women’s rights and health care needs by no means begins or ends with the crude attack by Rush Limbaugh, whose verbal mauling of Sandra Fluke — simply for advocating affordable access to birth control before a congressional panel — stunned so many Americans. The GOP war is playing out far more broadly around the nation through attacks by Republican-controlled state governments on partial state funding for Planned Parenthood, and on Title X, the chief federal program for family planning.
Some Tennessee lawmakers, along with those in a dozen other state legislatures, seek a cutoff of funding to Planned Parenthood, which offers an array of women’s’ health care services. But it is Texas that has shown just how cruel and aggressive state governments can be against services to women when legislatures lose sight of reason, simple compassion and the wide need for general health care for women.
Texas’ Republican-dominated Legislature has slashed funding to Planned Parenthood by two-thirds. That has led to the closing of more than a dozen vital clinics across the state, some run by Planned Parenthood, and some by independent clinics that were partially funded by Planned Parenthood.
The services they provided went mostly to low-income women who cannot afford health insurance, and who have few options. Those services included pap smears, screenings for breast and cervical cancer, screenings for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, counseling on infertility options, counseling on adolescent abstinence, and some contraceptive services. Notably, none of these clinics, not even those run by Planned Parenthood, provided abortion services.
In fact, Texas had already moved to bar clinics that receive state assistant from performing abortions. But that wasn’t good enough. The Republican right-wingers’ new law is designed to preclude any money, for any service, to Planned Parenthood.