In the past two years, Texas legislators slashed funds for family planning and passed up $30 million a year in federal Medicaid money, largely to squeeze Planned Parenthood out of the state’s women’s health programs. Last week, hundreds gathered at the south steps of the Texas State Capitol in Austin to protest the resulting public health mess: researchers say nearly 200,000 Texas women have lost or could lose access to contraception, cancer screenings, and basic preventive care, especially in low-income, rural parts of the state. …

Given that anti-choice legislators in other states could draw inspiration from Texas’s “winning” strategy to defund Planned Parenthood—several have tried and failed in recent years—it’s worth surveying the damage.

About a year after Texas slashed its family-planning budget by two-thirds, with 50 clinics shutting down as a result, the Texas Policy Evaluation Project surveyed 300 pregnant women seeking an abortion in Texas. Nearly half said they were “unable to access the birth control that they wanted to use” in the three months before they became pregnant. Among the reasons: cost, lack of insurance, inability to find a clinic, and inability get a prescription. The state’s health commission says Texas will see nearly 24,000 unplanned births between 2014 and 2015 thanks to these cuts, raising state and federal taxpayer’s Medicaid costs by up to $273 million.

Video reporting from the rally and more: Charts: This Is What Happens When You Defund Planned Parenthood

Republican lawmakers in Texas have cut the state’s family planning budget by two-thirds, forcing many clinics that focus on women’s health to close across the state.

The Religious Right and the Roman Catholic hierarchy want you to think that the overwhelming majority of people of faith are opposed to the Obama administration’s birth-control mandate, but that just isn’t true.

Yesterday, the Religious Institute, which is “a multi-faith organization dedicated to sexual health, education and justice,” published An Open Letter to Religious Leaders on Family Planning. The letter was signed by more than 1,000 clergy from many different faith perspectives, and it demands equal access to contraception for all women.

“The denial of [coverage for] family planning services effectively translates into coercive childbearing and is an insult to human dignity,” the letter says.

The Rev. Debra W. Haffner, president of the Religious Institute, said in a statement, “It is a critical misunderstanding to equate the minority of those religious leaders who have fought the coverage of birth control during the past year with threats and lawsuits, with the majority of people of faith in the United States who support access to contraception.

“Let us be clear,” she continued, “that support for religious freedom means that women must have the right to accept or reject the principles of their own faith without restrictions, regardless of their place of employment or geographical location. It is unethical for any single religious voice to claim to speak for all religious people in this debate.”

As Americans United noted earlier in the week, the Obama administration has made every effort to compromise with aggressive sectarian lobbies on this matter.

More: 1,000 Religious Leaders Stand Up for Religious Liberty and Contraceptive Access

Birth control was illegal 97 years ago, when Margaret Sanger and her sister, Ethel, opened a clinic in a tiny storefront in Brooklyn — the first Planned Parenthood health center. For 10 cents apiece, women could get information about family planning. From the very first day, women lined up down the block with baby buggies and babies in their arms.

Back then, it wasn’t unusual for women to have eight or 10 children, and women routinely died in childbirth. Margaret’s own mother had died at the age of 48, her body literally worn out from having 11 children and seven miscarriages.

Ten days after Margaret opened her clinic, she was arrested and thrown in jail — where she taught her fellow inmates about birth control. And the Planned Parenthood movement was started.

In 1960, the pill was approved as a contraceptive by the FDA and began to change women’s lives dramatically. But we still had to fight. It wasn’t until 1965 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that married couples had a right to use birth control, in a case heard on behalf of one of Planned Parenthood’s great leaders. Since then, we’ve spent decades trying to make birth control more affordable by getting health insurance coverage that includes birth control, like it does any other preventive care.

Today we are closer than ever to realizing that promise. This morning, the Department of Health and Human Services announced new guidance for implementing the birth control benefit of the Affordable Care Act. The proposed regulations released today make clear that women will have access to birth control at no cost, no matter where they work.

Regulations like this can get confusing. Here’s the bottom line: places of worship are exempt from the birth control benefit, and they always have been. Today’s regulations don’t expand the group of employers that are exempt. Instead, the regulations simplify the definition of who is exempt, and they map out how women at other religiously affiliated employers (like schools and hospitals) will get birth control at no cost.

More: Cecile Richards: Birth Control Benefit a Huge Advance for Women’s Health and Equality

Hans Rosling shares the story of Ethiopia and the incredible progress it has made in saving the lives of children over the last 50 years. By continuing to measure this progress, we can end the label of “developing countries” by 2030.

The rest of the story is that when families have fewer children numerous other measurable outcomes also improve: wealth, education, health, all tend get better over time when countries and families practice family planning.

Judge Allows Texas to Ban State Funding to Planned Parenthood

Think about this for a minute, especially if you are a Texan. The taxpayers of Texas will now have to pick up approximately 31.5 million dollars in services, and the bulk of those dollars will go to anti-choice church backed clinics once Planned Parenthood is taken out of the picture. Are average Texans really so backward that they think it’s ok not to have family planning that includes abortion and contraception advice that’s not packaged with religion? Are Texans really so misogynistic that they are going to let loud mouthed religious zealots set health policy for most Women in Texas?

In the latest of a series of legal proceedings about the women’s health program, a judge ruled Monday that Texas could cut off state funding from Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas and client Marcela Balquinta filed for a temporary restraining order to keep the provider in the new state women’s health program that is scheduled to begin on Jan. 1.

The provider will get another chance at a temporary injunction at another hearing on Jan. 11, but in the meantime, the Planned Parenthood will not be a part of the state-run women’s health program when it launches tomorrow.

Visiting Judge Gary Harger ruled that Texas may exclude the otherwise qualified provider as part of the state’s ban on abortion affiliates from the program, the Associated Press reports.

“It is shocking that once again Texas officials are letting politics jeopardize health care access for women,” said Ken S. Lambrecht, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas. “Regardless of what happens in the courts, Planned Parenthood will be here for our patients. Our doors remain open today and always to Texas women in need. We only wish Texas politicians shared this commitment to Texas women, their health, and their well being.”

Until today, the federal government paid for 90 percent of the $35 million program, but that match expired because Texas chose to switch to a state-funded version of the Medicaid Women’s Health Program that purposefully excluded Planned Parenthood as an approved provider.

MY PSA for this week

Published on Dec 20, 2012

Share your voice at no-controversy.com.

There is no controversy in empowering women to decide if and when to have a child.

Today, more than 200 million women and girls in developing countries who don’t want to get pregnant lack access to contraceptives.

nytimes.com

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A federal appeals court ruled late Tuesday that Texas can cut off funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that provide health services to low-income women before a trial over a new law that bans state money from going to organizations tied to abortion providers.

State officials sought to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood clinics that provide family planning and health services to poor women as part of the Texas Women’s Health Program after the state’s Republican-led Legislature passed a law banning funds to organizations linked to abortion providers. No state money goes to pay for abortions.

The appeal’s court decision means Texas is now free to enforce its ban on clinics affiliated with abortion providers. Planned Parenthood provides cancer screenings and other services — but not abortions — to about half of the 130,000 low-income Texas women enrolled in the program, which is designed to provide services to women who might not otherwise qualify for Medicaid.

Let’s hear it for the Texas GOP-run government. Fighting the good fight, denying all kinds of services to the people that need them the most. Hooray for you, you stupid redneck sons of bitches.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz sent the letter below out, and I’ve redacted the fund raising links. When I contrast her letter to the hyperbolic “Help Mitt save America from [Obamacare! Socialism!, Shariah!, Illegal immigration!, etc.”] push surveys that I get regularly from the Romney/Ryan campaign & PACs, Debbie is remarkably lucid, factual, and reasonable by comparison.

No doubt the GOP will squawk over her packaging of Romney/Ryan with Todd Akin, saying that Mitt disavowed him, but words are just words while GOP actions across the country the past three years demonstrate time after time that the GOP totally wants to abolish abortion, that they hate family planning, that they want to limit access to birth control, and that many among them want to take us back to the patriarchal dark ages - when women’s issues were managed by men. Todd Akin is not an outlier among their norm, he’s just a little less polished, and his words aren’t just words, they are backed up by actions, like working with Paul Ryan, Romney’s running mate, to redefine Rape in a bill.

Here’s the letter:

Friend —

In a year that has brought us no shortage of stunningly backward statements from Republicans on issues affecting women’s health, the GOP Senate nominee from Missouri may have just taken the cake.

This morning, Rep. Todd Akin, explaining his opposition to abortion even in cases of rape, said that victims of “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

What exactly, Rep. Akin, is an “illegitimate” rape? And what are these unnamed “ways” women have of avoiding pregnancy after being (legitimately) raped?

Now, Akin’s choice of words isn’t the real issue here. The real issue is a Republican party — led by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan — whose policies on women and their health are dangerously wrong.

I’m outraged at the Republicans trying to take women back to the dark ages — if you agree, join me in taking a stand for women.

Really, it’s deeply concerning that Republicans continue to support legislation that is, quite literally, dangerous for women.

Mitt Romney famously says he would “get rid of” federal funding for Planned Parenthood if he had the chance. His running mate, Paul Ryan, was one of more than 200 Republican cosponsors of a piece of legislation that would have narrowed the definition of rape.

Can you imagine — the same Republican House that refuses to pass a jobs bill jumped at the opportunity to make life harder for victims of rape?

And what do Romney and Ryan think of Akin’s latest statement? They’ve been trying to distance themselves from it — but Congressman Ryan has already partnered with Akin on a whole host of issues that restrict women’s ability to make their own health care decisions.

This kind of “leadership” is dangerously wrong for women — and I can’t sit by and watch as these out of touch Republicans like Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and Todd Akin continue to roll back women’s rights.

It’s time for us to move forward — not back — on women’s rights. Take a stand for women now.
Thanks,
Debbie

Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Chair, Democratic National Committee

Youtube Video

Melinda Gates speaks to why giving women and girls access to family planning tools and information is the easiest way to allow them the ability to determine their own futures. The London Summit on Family Planning on July 11, 2012 is the opportunity for the world to come together to invest in women and girls by pledging to support family planning for the millions who need and want it.

There are already wingnuts at the youtube page making comments about abortion because they equate all contraceptives and family planning with abortion.