Opponents of Women's Health Include Everything But the Kitchen Sink in Budget Bill Attacks
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The House Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Subcommittee voted to approve an appropriations bill with provisions including everything but the kitchen sink, designed to eliminate, restrict or dismantle significant women’s health programs, reminding us once again how important the November election is and just how high the stakes are.
So what’s so bad about the proposal put forward by these opponents of women’s health and our well-known chump, chairman of the subcommittee, Dennis Rehberg?
Remember that time when Rehberg said Washington wasn’t attacking women’s health? (Psst. It was two months ago.)
If they’re not attacking women’s health, then they could really enlighten us with an explanation of why the proposed legislation includes provisions that would
- prevent Planned Parenthood from providing basic preventive health care, such as lifesaving cancer screenings, STD testing and treatment, Pap tests and birth control;
- eliminate funding for Title X Family Planning program, which ensures nearly five million low-income women receive the basic and preventive care they need;
- limit women’s access to abortion by effectively banning private health insurance coverage for this procedure as part of the new health exchange programs; and
- block implementation of the groundbreaking provisions of Obamacare.
Beyond these extreme attacks, the proposal includes a revival of the famed Blunt amendment, which would allow your boss to deny any essential health care service (including coverage for birth control and cancer screenings) that they saw fit. It also increases funding for abstinence-only education, despite the fact that research has shown it’s ineffective in preventing teen pregnancy (let’s not forget the fact that states with the highest teen birthrate in the country are those that do not have comprehensive sex education or stress abstinence only.) The proposal put forth by opponents of women’s health includes a slew of attacks designed to restrict their access to health care, in order to advance their own political agenda.
It appears that the mantra among the opponents of women’s health like Dennis Rehberg is: if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.
