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Trump's People Find New Way to Defund Planned Parenthood
Trump's administation is working hard to severely harm the rights of women, particularly lower income or rural ones, to access healthcare and control their own body.
Clinics that provide abortions or refer patients to places that do would lose federal funding under a new Trump administration rule that takes direct aim at Planned Parenthood....
The rule.... is the latest move by Trump to impose curbs on abortion rights, in this case by withholding money from any facility or program that [discusses] abortion or refers patients to a caregiver that will provide one.
This is happening via an obscure rule from 1988 under President Reagan.
The policy.... required abortion services to have a “physical separation” and “separate personnel” from other family planning activities. That policy is often described as a domestic gag rule because it barred caregivers at facilities that received family planning funds from providing any information to patients about an abortion or where to receive one.
For the one millionth time, federal funding to Planned Parenthood is not permitted to and does not fund abortions. This is an attempt to destroy their organization which performs incredibly crucial services. The vital, life-saving role of Planned Parenthood for millions of women is not properly reported or understood by most.
The bulk of federal money Planned Parenthood receives, though, goes toward preventive health care, birth control, pregnancy tests and other women's health services. Federal law prohibits taxpayer dollars from funding abortions and Planned Parenthood says 3% of the services it provides are abortions.
...government money rarely goes to [abortions]. In fact, it’s designated for services like cancer screens that saved nearly 88,000 lives between the fall of 2012 and 2013. The American Cancer Society estimates that about 44,390 women will die from breast and cervical cancers this year. But Planned Parenthood detected cancers early and identified abnormalities in nearly double that amount of women through breast exams and Pap tests... the reproductive health services organization saw 2.7 million patients last year and provided nearly 500,000 breast exams and nearly 400,000 Pap tests... Defunding the non-profit at the federal level would thereby endanger the lives of 900,000 women.
Republicans are playing politics with the health and well-being of millions of women in a sick attempt to energize their base and win elections.
Republicans see the action as a way to motivate the GOP base ahead of the midterm elections, where the party’s majorities in the House and Senate are in play.
The push from abortion opponents has enraged congressional Democrats, who say the changes would restrict access to reproductive health care.
“We strongly oppose efforts to undermine the integrity of the Title X program and harm the millions of people who rely on it for care,” 45 Senate Democrats wrote Tuesday in a letter to Azar. “Federal health policy should be evidence-based and produced with the best interests of patients in mind.”
Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the new proposal “outrageous” and “dangerous.” The policy.... is “designed to make it impossible for millions of patients to get birth control or preventive care from reproductive health care providers like Planned Parenthood. This is designed to force doctors and nurses to lie to their patients. It would have devastating consequences across this country.”
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/us/politics/trump-funding-abortion-restrictions.html
http://smartdissent.com/article/trump-privately-signs-anti-planned-parenthood-bill