Senator Mitch McConnell said Thursday that the debates over abortion and spending should be separated. In case you're not caught up, Conservatives are looking into Planned Parenthood and trying to defund it. These disagreements threaten to shutdown their committees, something that most agree would not accomplish anything. The abortion debate and the Planned Parenthood debate are two different things, and lumping them together is causing misunderstanding about each and hindering progress for both sides. McConnell is now trying to take down the organization and propose new bills to restrict abortion access separately, without threatening shutdown.
Focusing on the abortion side of Planned Parenthood is misleading. Abortion is only 3% of what Planned Parenthood does. It also offers cancer screenings, STD tests, birth control, pregnancy tests, prenatal services, immunizations, and pediatric care. Trying to shut down the entire organization, will have a disastrous outcome. Planned Parenthood offers critical healthcare to millions of low-income women and families who would be unable to afford it any other way. Those trying defund it, have no replacement and over half of Planned Parenthood's users have no access to any other options.
Planned Parenthood is facing huge roadblocks in Texas and the state has taken many steps to restrict family planning centers and even banning centers that offer abortion. The result? Texas has the highest percentage in the nation of uninsured adult women and the numbers of unintended pregnancies and STDS have soared. In the 1950s and 1960s abortions were illegal, but that didn't reduce the number of women who needed them. Women's health services were virtually nonexistent and hundreds of women died because of it. We cannot continue to treat these two issues as one or it could have very serious repercussions.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/politics/mitch-mcconnell-abortion-government-shutdown/index.html
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2015/05/20/how-texas-lawmakers-continue-to-undermine-womens-health/
Defunding Planned Parenthood would impact do many people, because of all the services it provides. Conservatives who are trying defund it should look at the bigger picture, rather than just the small part that is abortion. -Claudia Anthony
ReplyDeleteIt's so crazy that Conservatives think it's actually okay to significantly reduce the funding for Planned Parenthood. Reducing the funding won't decrease the amount of abortions carried out in the U.S., it'll only increase the number of people below the poverty line. Limiting the resources of struggling mothers will make them want an abortion, but these same people want to ban abortion, too! It's a cycle that Conservatives can't seem to understand.
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