Republicans are at it again -- forcing their social agenda onto the country. Friday, they threatened a government shutdown if Planned Parenthood was not banned from receiving Title X funding, a program for women's health services, in the final 2011 government spending bill.
It is unconscionable that America was being held hostage so that a select few can arbitrarily decide who can and cannot provide critical preventative health services for our mothers, sisters and daughters.
Unfortunately, this continues a dangerous trend that started when Republicans took control of the House in January. At every step, opportunities to increase women's access to health care have been met with bills and amendments that would do the opposite.
In this constant push to cut access, one has to wonder if Republicans have really thought through all the effects of their actions. If they have, why aren't they proposing alternatives that would fill the gaps created by ending the programs they are attacking?
Specifically, where are the proposals that would replace the Title X services that Planned Parenthood clinics provide to nearly five million Americans who rely on them for preventative health care?
Many Republicans claim their heartless measures to cut Title X for Planned Parenthood are to ensure that no federal funding goes toward abortions. They claim this despite knowing that federal laws already restrict the use of federal funds for elective abortions and cutting this funding would shut down clinics helping millions of women in some of our most underserved neighborhoods.
More than 95 percent of the work these clinics do is not related to abortion. Rather, it is important preventative health services that every American woman desperately needs and help avoid expensive treatment for costly preventable diseases, saving U.S. taxpayers money.
Despite proof that not a penny of federal funding goes toward abortion services, House Republicans have continued to attack these clinics -- offering absolutely no alternative should funding be rescinded.
Similarly, where are alternative proposals that would stop the close to one million unintended pregnancies that Title X services help prevent each year? Through education and family planning for millions of American women, clinics like those run by Planned Parenthood prevent more than 800,000 unintended births and abortions annually.
In 1970, then-Rep. George H.W. Bush said when proposing Title X:
"We need to make population and family planning household words. We need to take sensationalism out of this topic so that it can no longer be used by militants who have no real knowledge of the voluntary nature of the program but, rather are using it as a political steppingstone. If family planning is anything, it is a public health matter."
Finally, where are the proposals that would prohibit health insurance companies from charging women more than men if Republicans are successful in repealing the health care reform bill? Statistics now show that women are often charged significantly more than men for the same insurance policy. In some cases, more than 150 percent more.
But under the new health care reform law, beginning in 2014, insurers will no longer be able to do this. The reform also allows women to receive critical, money-saving preventive services, including mammograms, breast feeding support services and screenings for cancer and other diseases, without having to co-pay.
Yet, Republicans continue their attempts to repeal and defund the new law.
Title X funds provide an array of confidential preventive health services. In 2009 alone, under this critical program, Americans received 2.2 million Pap tests, more than 2.3 million breast exams and 6.9 million STD tests. Title X saves the U.S. taxpayer at least $3.4 billion in health care costs annually, according to Guttmacher Institute estimates.
If Republicans plan to defund one of the largest providers of these services, they need to suggest an alternative. They shouldn't hold the country hostage on an 11th-hour demand -- threatening our economy and the jobs we sorely need.
Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) serves as a member of the House Budget and Appropriations Committees. Follow Rep Honda on Facebook and Twitter.
Follow Rep. Mike Honda on Twitter: www.twitter.com/repmikehonda
Cut all deductions to churches, and we might not have to cut food and medical care to poor and elderly people, surely the churches would forgo their cushy tax status to support that?
Why aren't Rep. Honda and other pro-abortion Dems willing to agree to a compromise of this kind?
Why do the forced birther groups insist on breaking something that isn't broke?
aren't we a lucky bunch :)
it's pro choice.
This isn't about just stopping a woman's right to choose, this is about controlling women. There is a larger issue at play.
It takes two to tango, so the idea that you will torture a woman if she becomes pregnant is just plan wrong.
For the alternative, link to: http://hubpages.com/hub/Republicans-Censure-Democrat-For-Use-Of-The-Word-Uterus-What-Would-They-Do-If-A-Dem-Listed-Other-Body-Parts
I never hear any Congressional representatives warning about the takeover of government by the religious zealots. Does anyone on the Hill read? Do they know about the "Family" and their hatred of unions, SS and every secular program and their long- term plan to get rid of them all? Do they know that Christian Nationalists/Reconstuctionist/Revisionist/Dominionist are your pages, and aides on the Hill, that they sit in the DOJ, State Department and in the Pentagon?
The 175 members of the Republican Study Committee have their own agenda--does their Values Action Team still meet with Focus on the Family and 10 other Evangelical groups every Thursday? The website seems to have disappeared.
Have you noticed that Robertson, Warren, and Dobson are pretty quiet, while this war is going
on? Why would they speak up when their puppets are all in place, and finishing the destruction of secular America?
So, thanks for serving, but you and your fellow sensible, compassionate, empathetic peers are allowing his to continue. Someone with credibility and common sense needs to speak out and put a stop to the religious takeover of our government. Talk amongst yourselves, and perhaps you and your fellow representatives can come up with a plan.
If you're rich you can spend $50/month on birth control pills or $800 on an IUD and have all the non-reproductive sex you want.
If you're poor you either have to stay abstinent (which nobody does), or have 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 babies that you don't want and the government won't help you feed our house anyway.
Everything with the far-right wing of GOP seems to revolve around the belief that if you're poor it MUST mean you have bad morals and you're too lazy to work hard, so you don't deserve any help at all. And that rich people are by definition better and more moral, so they should have options in life that the poor don't get.
...' If you're poor you either have to stay abstinent (which nobody does), or have 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 babies that you don't want...'
It is just terrible that those are the only two choices that are available for ' The Poor".... No sex or keep pushing out babies every year or so.
...' Everything with the far-right wing of GOP seems to revolve around the belief that if you're poor it MUST mean you have bad morals...'
Just because a woman is having 10 children fatherless children, It certainly does not follow that she has a lack of morals or common sense.
Rather than condemn a woman because she celebrates with unprotected sex, we should embrace her freedom , choices and reproductive health.
(sarcasm off)
Personal responsibility to lose your teeth.
then you can be pregnant and toothless, what a joy!
Women are trying to keep PP because it provides education and low cost birth control. Why does the GOP want to stop the funding for that? Are they trying to force all poor women to be punished by not ever havig sex?
You are very spot on with your observations. The poor have few options and the GOP is trying to take away the ones that are avalable. F&F'ed.
They believe so devoutly in the power of a name to confuse and distort the truth.
He claimed women could get pap smears and breast exams at Walgreen's.
Walgreen's denied that they offer those services.
I am SO sick of this.
Yeck!
Geez, this country needs a do over.
but seriously...one of my conservative friends says if you are scared of getting pregnant then dont have sex. and if you do have sex, then you need to deal with the fact that having sex may result in a baby, and be prepared to accept the consequences. he is totally against ab0rtion.
Per www.americanpregnancy.org/preventingpregnancy/birthcontrolfailure.html the failure rates are as follows for the most commomly used methods. The rate is nowhere near 8% unless you are depending on the guy.:
Condom---14%
Depo Provera Injection--0.3%
IUD/copper--0.8%
IUD/Progesterone--2%
Lunelle injection--1%
Oral Contraceptives--5%
Obviously, if a woman does not want to have a baby it is up to her to insure she doesn't.
The answer to failures of birth control taken concientiously should be adoption,not abortion.
Not everyone agrees with you. So why should everyone else think the way you do about the beginning of life?
Science hasn't been able to prove when life begins exactly, so it's a matter of what the individual thinks about it.
Women have complete control over their own bodies. It is called saying "No." This is an uncontested right. Anyone who violates it can be arrested for rape. Anyone who takes sexual advantage of a vulnerable minor is likewise a felon.
In the small percentage of cases of rape or incest no one but the most extreme is denying the opportunity for an abortion if pregnancy ensues.
And the justification for restricting abortions based on rape or incest is even worse. If for some reason a woman can't afford legal representation due to poverty, or convince a biased jury, the law is effectively forcing her to have a child conceived in circumstances beyond her control.