Defunding women’s rights

By|Domanique Crawford

Don’t spit on my cupcake and call it frosting, don’t urinate on my leg and tell me it’s raining, and don’t make laws restricting my access to healthcare and claim it’s to protect my taxpayer money.

On March 30, Vice President Mike Pence cast a tie-breaking vote on a measure that effectively defunds Planned Parenthood [PPFA]. The new legislation allows states to withhold federal funding from PPFA and other healthcare programs that provide abortion services.

Congress first had to agree to rollback on Department of Health and Human Services rule established under the Obama administration that prohibited cutting funds from Title X family planning grants to community health centers because they offer abortion services.

Despite what the new administration thinks, these programs are not secret baby killing factories. In fact, abortion services are only 3 percent of PPFA’s total services according to the PPFA fact sheet. Regardless of your feelings on abortion, defunding health clinics like PPFA means limiting women’s access to affordable healthcare.

More and more the Trump administration and state lawmakers seem to be passing laws restricting women’s right under the guise of de-funding abortion services. When clearly, this is another strike against women’s right to equality.

Even if critics of clinics like PPFA, are afraid of these programs using taxpayer money to fund abortion services, they could just as easily form greater stipulations and regulations monitoring the usage of such resources rather than then simply defunding it. As usually seen with this administration, they defunded another program without a clear plan in sight for all of the low-income people rejected healthcare services by the bill. An attitude that says the Trump administration doesn’t actually care about what happens to women.

Lawmakers are using a highly controversial issue of abortion to push laws that subjugate women and classify us as second class citizens unable maintain our simplest values. The right to govern or own bodies.

Pro-choice is simply your right to choose. I respect pro-lifers decision to have a child despite the physical harm the pregnancy can cause the mother, the mental and physical conditions of the baby, and the determination to have a child despite the circumstance of conception through natural conception or through sexual assault.

I don’t condone pro-lifers forcing their ideals on the rest of us by threatening our access to healthcare. Pro-lifers are free to make that choice for themselves. However, to enforce those options on someone else is barbaric. What’s worse, is punishing women who depend on these Title X services for access to pregnancy care other than abortions, contraceptives, STD/STI testing and treatment, etc.

If the government were really worried about protecting taxpayer money rather than restricting women’s right, then they would have installed greater measures that guarantee taxpayer money isn’t going towards paying for abortion services. That is what regulatory agencies are for.