File photo/The Cougar
Apparently, there’s no room in the Texas budget for basic women’s healthcare.
Recently, Republican leaders in Texas, due to their lack of decision-making skills, have come to the conclusion that funding cervical and breast cancer screenings by Planned Parenthood are deemed an unnecessary expense.
If we think we live in a progressive era, we should consider the notable changes that have recently proven otherwise.
Ted Cruz assumes his religious convictions are “American values,” but why should his opinion be the only one that matters?
It’s obvious that the fight for pushing Planned Parenthood out of Texas is not only a morality issue, but also the ultimate goal on Cruz’s agenda.
Last month he even emailed and invited over 100,000 pastors for an “all-out assault on Planned Parenthood.” His intention was loud and clear. America should defund the organization completely.
“I am urging you to confront this evil in our nation by praying and preaching with an unbridled passion until funding for Planned Parenthood ends and this barbaric practice is purged from the land,” Cruz said.
“The battle we face is not political. It is spiritual. To enter this arena in a prayer-less condition invites failure.”
Cruz likes to play on emotion as well as dramatics. He hones in on the opportunity that religious institutions can do his PR work for him. It becomes less of an issue of women’s health as it becomes a race for the public’s approval, after falsified videos were leaked a few months ago.
According to Bloomberg Politics, this advancement in Cruz’s campaign against the organization has many states following suit such as Louisiana, which plans to cut its Medicaid assistance to Planned Parenthood on Monday.
Last Wednesday, congressional meetings were held focusing their attention on abortion and the issue of the circulated videos. Planned Parenthood representatives were not invited to attend and defend themselves.
What a shocker.
Alyssa Quesada, 25, is a single mother who works as a medical assistant for home health with Planned Parenthood.
“(The) first time I came to their clinic, I was quickly seen and given information pertaining to safe sex and guidance on the different methods of birth control that were offered. They were kind and informative,” Quesada said.
“Ted Cruz’s cult followers are the first in line to judge about what is and isn’t right and how this organization ‘defies God’ But they will also be the quickest to turn their backs on the young women of America who really need help and government assistance,” she said.
It has become a back-breaking struggle to find other outlets for affordable women’s healthcare with the new restricted laws. Planned Parenthood offers thousands of women birth control for as low as $9 without insurance.
The government of Texas needs to look past conservative virtues and give women that are seeking support a better alternative before they revoke what we do have.
Cruz, we as women, take note that you are trying to compensate in your deficiency of leadership skills with religious authoritarianism. But please refrain from abusing your power and limiting ours.
CORRECTION: The word ‘delusion’ was originally misspelled in the SEO headline.
Opinion columnist Phylicia Sneed is an English senior and may be reached at [email protected].
I seriously wouldn’t worry about it to much. The Proverbial Genie has been let out of the bottle. Despite a Conservative President here and there and the smattering of Conservative Congresses, Liberals have been in Power in the Western World for about 200 years. I cant see the Western World ever returning to the Conservative World of the Dark Ages….but that’s not saying we shouldn’t be vigilant.
I am assuming that you are a man and therefore, women’s access to basic health care AND reproductive services is not something that you feel very strongly about — like MOST men. There have been over 250 bills passed around this country in the past few years restricting women’s access to abortion AND to basic health care. Women who are legally DEAD have been forcibly put on life support in a feeble attempt to keep a 14 week fetus alive, in the hopes that SOMEHOW a fetus can survive the death of the woman. Women have been charged with “depraved heart murder” after suffering a miscarriage. Do you know that Rick Santorum wants to deny ALL women access to birth control? Even if they pay for it themselves? Women’s health care centers have been shut down all over the country because their supply closets aren’t big enough. Yes, we need to be vigilant alright.
Well said and I agree completely. However, I don’t think you and Sol disagree.
I am a man and Im very much in Favor of PP. Actually, I think its vital. What I was trying to imply was that its mostly political bluster. Bills like you mentioned will be a step back from time to time but in the end Progress cant be stopped which is what I meant by “the Genie has been let out of the bottle”.
“Last month he even emailed and invited over 100,000 pastors for an “all-out assault on Planned Parenthood” last month.”
“He hones in on the opportunity that religious institutions can do his PR work for him.”
?
Your overall perspective is good, but you need a better editor.
Very poorly written. Obviously a high school dropout with no journalism training.
“Women’s liberties”, i.e. the “right” for her to kill the baby in her womb. I’m pro-choice because it’s none of my business, but this euphemism of “women’s choice”, “women’s reproductive rights” and “women’s liberties” is garbage. Every woman considering an abortion should weigh the implications – that she is KILLING what will someday be her child – and not veil it in a cloak of so-called civil liberties.
The right to live free is a civil liberty. The right to speak your mind without government intervention is a civil liberty. The “right” to going to Planned Parenthood and having a baby slurped out of your uterus is not.
And I’m sorry, doesn’t Obamacare now cover all the other activities that Planned Parenthood does? The answer is Yes.
It IS a woman’s choice. It’s a zygote. Get over it. You don’t want to end abortion. You LOVE abortion! Pontificating against it makes you sound sooooo holy.
A zygote with a brain, fingers, toes, eyes and ears.
As my biology prof said: they are cells, they are living, it is life.
And the woman with a zygote inside her is also alive; as is the potential father, and any brothers and sisters. If having another family member pushes the whole family into poverty, that can adversely affect the lives of all family members. When weighing all lives in the balance, what decision is best? The mother is by far the best one to make that decision.
If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one, and make sure your actions never put a woman in the position of having to make that decision.
Cancer is cells, that are living, so they are life; do we give have to stop treating cancer. A zygote is no more than replicating cells at that point, it has no brain. It is not until after it is an embryo and 4 weeks that the nervous system (brain and spinal cord) has begun to form and the heart begins to form and the arm and leg buds begin to develop. Your biology prof and you need to educate yourself on pregnancy.
Tell me this – when do most abortions occur?
A: At least 6 weeks. Post development of brain and spinal cord.
thanks for playing.
Tell me this, who still got it wrong? You are the weakest link. 😉
Oh goodie. Another man trying to explain women’s issues to us poor little women. Isn’t he special to tell us that our reproductive rights and liberties are garbage. Now, you and other men may not realize there are differences between civil liberties and civil rights. This is where Google can help. The legality of a woman having an abortion was based on the Supreme Court deciding that a pregnant woman has a right to privacy. And that, honey, IS a civil liberty.
Hey, what are you wearing?
Cruz is a bloviating fraud, interested only in gathering headlines. Cruz is for Cruz. He couldn’t care less about women’s health or babies’ health. The guy is one big publicity stunt.
Planned Parenthood prevents thousands of abortions a year. But don’t let that fact get in your way, Rafael.
How is “Christian Law” any different from “Sharia Law”. Both want their religious beliefs to be the law of the land. We are not ruled by religion, we are ruled by secular laws.
Christians don’t like abortion at any time up to birth, for any reason besides rape, incest or the health of the mother and they are against chopping up live birth babies for parts to sell. Sharia law is for chopping up women’s parts and mercy killings of women that dare have a life. That’s the difference. Democrats on the other hand, see no reason to limit abortion in the United States for any reason at any time in the pregnancy, including during birth.
Cruz is the worst Texas has put out so far, and in Texas leadership, which is the worst I have ever seen, that says a lot.
Note that with the exception of abortions, all other services provided by Planned Parenthood are already subsidized by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), the cost is already built in. To continue funding Planned Parenthood for those services is to double pay, and funnel money to one of the most partisan organizations in the country. We all complain about the wasteful abuses of lobbyists – this is one of them. If you really want the abuses to stop, it’s time to wake up start practicing fact-based political judgments.
Care to cite what part of the ACA guarantees that?
https://www.healthcare.gov/preventive-care-benefits/women/
http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts/factsheets/2011/08/womensprevention08012011a.html
Hint: learning to use google is a wonderful thing.
Also note that Obamacare is available everywhere, nationwide. Planned Parenthood, not so much. In fact, if you look at the demographics of Planned Parenthood locations, it comparatively quite thin.
All I asked for were sources. When you make claims, you bear the burden of proof, not me. You brought up an interesting point and I wanted to know where you were getting your information. No need to be a jackass about it.
Sorry – it was such an easy thing to verify, I presumed your inquiry was disingenuous. My bad. Please accept my apology and thank you for actually wanting to know facts.
Fair enough. And all I care about are facts. You brought up something that’s not the typical hyper-conservative, baseless rhetoric, and those are points I take seriously.
The argument is simple: there are people who think sucking babies out of their mother, chopping them up and selling their parts is inhumane. Some even go so far as to say it is immoral.
One side thinks the government should fund this practice. Should pay for it with tax dollars. The other side thinks that’s bad.
It seems like a fair argument to have.
This is not about funding preventive care for women. PP is the largest provider of abortion in America. That’s their principle purpose.
This hasn’t been paid for by the government in 40 years. Instead, tax dollars are used for pap smears, BC and other PP services. My local PP doesn’t even provide abortions to clients, only other services mentioned. I call BS.
PP gets $500M/year. They are the largest provider of abortion in the US.
Period.
Oh, and they chop up little babies and sell their parts.
Again, they don’t offer abortion at my local PP. The only abortion provider in town is a private practice. So, while you talk about this as an absolute, you would be ripping vital women’s health care from low-income people. PERIOD.
The most dangerous place for a black baby:
It’s mother’s womb.
50% of all black pregnancies end in abortion.
#blacklivesmatter
where did you get that info?
Your tagline is a very thin veil of “political correctness” in front of a wildly inaccurate and unsolicited statement.
The CDC’s last abortion study in 2011 reported that 17.97% of pregnancies nationwide ended in abortion (the lowest rate since abortion was legalized in the ’70s mind you). Of those, white women had more abortions than black women at 37.2% and 36.2% respectively.
That year nearly 600k black children were born and 48k were aborted thereby putting the rate at which black women got abortions at around 7.4%.
So, not only are you wrong, but you’re vastly wrong.
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6311a1.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_05.pdf
His main support comes from a creationist who made billions on fossil fuel. Oh the irony.
No one, whether Pro Life or Pro Choice, can deny that those videos were anything other than horrific.
For an organisation that is so heavily funded by the public, urgent answers are required from Planned Parenthood.
Not so much…
I know, they were horrific. Horrifically and strategically edited by an outspoken anti-abortion outfit to purposefully omit key information and portray a sexual health organization as demonic.
Rational and reasonable thinking would tell you that simple biology says that a fetus is not a woman’s tissue, but rather an unborn human being composed of DNA from both a mother and a father. Who should protect the baby’s right to life? Who holds the baby’s hand during the trauma of abortion? What if an abortion of a first pregnancy increases a woman’s risk of future miscarriages and low-birth weight babies when she does want to conceive? What if oral contraceptives increase a woman’s future risk of cancer (even if there are medical arguments on both sides of the debate)?
This from the Daily Signal:
“…According to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, there are over 9,000 federally qualified health centers operating around the country. Each year they provide 21.1 million Americans, in both rural and urban areas, with many of the same health services, with the exception of abortion, Planned Parenthood claims it provides. By comparison, Planned Parenthood operates only 700 centers and serves only 2.8 million people.
And for the record, Planned Parenthood does not have a license to perform mammograms at any of its facilities. Not one. But that doesn’t mean American women have nowhere to turn—according to the Food and Drug Administration, there are over 8,000 licensed mammogram facilities operating across the country as of July 2015…”
From NPR:
“…Efforts to strip Planned Parenthood of public dollars go back decades, as Kaiser Health News’ Julie Rovner wrote recently. The most recent attempt, known as S. 1881, would have stripped Planned Parenthood of federal funding and made it “available to other eligible entities to provide women’s health care services.” Senate Democrats, however, successfully blocked that bill this week…”
“.. [PP’s] 3 percent statistic has many critics, who point out, for example, that it doesn’t explain how much of Planned Parenthood’s revenue comes from abortion. Others note that the figure counts services provided, not patients served — and some patients receive more than one service from the organization. That means more than 3 percent of patients receive abortions (Politifact this week estimated the figure at around 12 percent, for example)…”
From an article titled: “Studies: Birth Control, Contraception Don’t Cut Abortions”
“…Planned Parenthood’s own affiliate, the Guttmacher Institute, showed simultaneous increases in both abortion rates and contraceptive use in the U.S., Cuba, Denmark, the Netherlands, Singapore, and South Korea. Guttmacher cites other countries as evidence of the opposite relationship, but it is noteworthy that many of those countries already had high abortion rates, often as part of existing coercive government policies…”
“…Abortion industry regulars admit the truth. Guttmacher regularly reports that 55%-60% of women having abortions are on contraception…”
Increased contraceptive use not only leads to more abortions, it also leads to more STDs
“One study, based on Centers for Disease Control data, established clear links between birth control and increases in sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).”
From another article entitled: “Sex-Ed Advocates Ignore the Relationship between Birth Control, Abortion and STDs”
“Although condoms are touted as effective protection against STDs, they have only a 50% rate of effectiveness for preventing gonorrhea and syphilis and have not been demonstrated to provide any protection against Chlamydia.”
Or, maybe you missed the 2013 article in the SF Gate titled “Condoms not effective against HPV or Herpes”. Yup, go read it and other sources I mentioned for yourself and fact check.
the articles you cited are from pro choice, ultra religious sources. The same people that wrote “Sex-Ed Advocates Ignore the Relationship between Birth Control, Abortion and STDs” also wrote “Diabetes Treatments and Moral Hazard” where the postulate that funding diabetes treatments encourages behavior that will lead to diabetes. Sources such as the Global Outreach Campus Ministries are not objective or scientific. Your information sources are incorrect.
Republicans are evil!