Cuts to Women’s Health Have Hurt More Than Just Planned Parenthood

[sonias]

Texas Observer 8/15/12

One Year Later, Cuts to Women’s Health Have Hurt More Than Just Planned Parenthood
More than 60 family planning clinics forced to close—only 12 belonged to Planned Parenthood. Critics say conservative lawmakers are ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water.’


The first in an occasional series of stories examining the impact of deep cuts to family planning services in Texas.

Diaphragms. Depo-Provera injections. Oral contraceptives. Pregnancy testing. Pap smears. Screening for sexually transmitted diseases. Since July 1, basic services like these are no longer accessible to low-income women in rural San Saba County, two hours northwest of Austin. If a poor woman in San Saba hopes to prevent pregnancy, she now must pay a private doctor or drive an hour to a free clinic. But for the many poor women, teens and undocumented clients of San Saba’s family planning program—run by Hill Country Community Action—both payment and travel may be beyond reach. The large majority of the program’s clients couldn’t afford contraceptives; of the 2,500 visits to the program in the last nine months, only 28 clients paid full fee, according to program records. Now that Hill Country Community Action has lost state family planning funds, San Saba County’s ability to prevent unwanted pregnancies just became a great deal harder.

What happened in San Saba County is being repeated all over Texas. In the year since deep cuts to family planning funding took effect, the impact has become apparent. An Observer review of state records has found that 146 clinics have lost state funds, clumped mainly in the Panhandle, Central Texas and on the border with Mexico. More than 60 of those clinics have closed their doors forever. The number of organizations that help poor women plan pregnancy has shrunk by almost half. As in San Saba, low-income women in many areas of Texas now face a long drive, or worse, lack of access to birth control and health screenings.

This isn’t news to conservative state lawmakers. After all, in its 2011 session, the Texas Legislature cut the state’s family planning program by two-thirds. Public health experts warned lawmakers at the time that by defunding Texas’s family planning system, clinics would close and a spike in disease, pregnancies and abortions would follow. Regardless, they slashed the budget. Lawmakers were quite clear about their motivation: They hoped to drive abortion providers out of business. Their specific target—Planned Parenthood—also provides family planning and preventive health care to low income women. In their zeal to attack Planned Parenthood, politicians designed a funding formula that caused collateral damage. They defunded many other family planning clinics that aren’t connected to Planned Parenthood and don’t offer any abortion services.

Excellent coverage by The Texas Observer as usual.

[sonias]

1. Related story - State-Run Women's Health Program Faces Questions

Texas Tribune 8/16/12

State-Run Women's Health Program Faces Questions

As state officials prepare to take full control of the once federally funded Texas Women’s Health Program on Nov. 1, they’re running into a series of unexpected challenges, from controversy around proposed rule changes to questions about how to cover the 130,000 enrolled clients within the confines of a tight state budget.

The state has pledged to forgo $35 million in annual federal funding — a 9 to 1 match — in order to exclude Planned Parenthood clinics from the program, clinics that have used Women's Health Program dollars to provide contraception and cancer screenings, but not abortions. Two separate courts have blocked Texas from ejecting those clinics ahead of legal hearings scheduled for the fall.

Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Perry has directed the Health and Human Services Commission to find a way to fund the 6-year-old program exclusively with state dollars.

In a May letter to the governor's office and the Legislative Budget Board, outgoing HHSC Commissioner Tom Suehs offered a funding mechanism for the program that included implementing cost-saving measures throughout the agency, a hiring freeze and enhancing efforts to recover funds from Medicaid fraud.

But opponents of efforts to oust Planned Parenthood from the program say the state was banking on paying for much of it another way — with the federal health reform Republican state leaders so revile. They point to legal filings and fiscal notes state officials prepared in July indicating they could fold Women’s Health Program clients into Medicaid starting in 2014, the year the Affordable Care Act calls for a widespread expansion of the safety net health care program. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Medicaid expansion is optional, and Perry has vowed that Texas will not do it.

"they could fold Women’s Health Program clients into Medicaid starting in 2014" From their own fiscal notes on how they could cut PP out.

So petty perry has painted himself into a corner since he can't support an expansion of Medicaid. So what's he going to do? It's simple - he's going to let Texas women die. Because they don't vote for him anyway.

[atreides1]

2. I have to disagree with you on one thing

This can't be put on Perry alone...many others share in this coming debacle! The religious fanatics who were the catalyst for the Republican legislature to attack Planned Parenthood...the Tea Bagger Party...those conservative women who didn't care...all of these are just as responsible as Perry, and along with Perry will have innocent blood on their hands.

[sonias]

3. Sure I'll concede to you on that point

Many, many republicans are responsible for these horrible laws. But Perry is the a-hole who made the decision not to take part in Obamacare and now they won't even have the federal money to plug the holes in his schemes.

Damn them all!

[mbperrin]

4. There must be more woman-haters per capita in the Texas state government than anywhere else

in the world. May their penises rot. Soon.

[Ilsa]

5. How stupid are these people?

Without easy access to birth control, these women will take their chances and risk it. Only eventually, they'll be seeking abortions. We'll see a spike in abortions soon, just like we see spikes in teen pregnancy when teens are taught "abstinence-only".

[Vogon_Glory]

6. These cuts are heartbreaking

These cuts are distressing and heartbreaking. They also threaten the public health of Texans in the areas where clinics have been forced to drastically curtail their services or close their doors.

I realize that some of the anti-abortion types think that if these clinics are shut down, there will be fewer abortions. That folk myth is rather firmly established in their minds and sub-groups. So are the myths that access to birth control will lead to "promiscuity" and that access to birth control leads to more abortions, despite plenty of evidence against the latter fable.

The right-wingers (And almost all the legislators forcing through these cuts are right-wingers) are of the belief that access to medicine is a privilege, not a right. Furthermore, their "prescription" of "just say no" and "don't have sex" flies against the face of human behavior and the evidence of decades.



(Maybe that's why some legislators don't want public health agencies to gather data, lest their fables face the light of truth).

The closure of these health clinics should be another wake-up call to the politically apathetic who choose to sideline themselves even without Tea Party-inspired voter suppression schemes. If you don't vote, somebody else will, and make political decisions you won't like, whether you like it or not.