On February 18th, the Republican-dominated House passed the Pence Amendment, also known as the Spending Limit Amendment (SLA), which proposes to slash all federal funding from Planned Parenthood and 102 closely-affiliated organizations. These organizations provide vital services to women and men, including STD testing, pregnancy testing, birth control, and condoms. If this bill passes in the Senate, and is signed into law, Planned Parenthood will lose the $300 million of annual federal funding.
This amendment, which many Americans accuse of launching a war on women and an assault on female productive rights, is named after Indiana Republican Representative Mike Pence. The Pence amendment proposes to stop frivolous spending by cutting various programs. In the bill, one of the proposed measures cuts funding for Title X, a national family planning program which provides reproductive health care for millions of low-income women. In a press release, Planned Parenthood officials argued that the Pence amendment would cut off nearly 1.4 million people from their main source of health care. It’s estimated that 1 in 5 women will visit Planned Parenthood in her lifetime.
Despite all the good work that Planned Parenthood does, including preventing more than 612,000 unintended pregnancies per year and providing more than 830,000 breast exams each year, their abortion-services are at the heart of this issue. Pence argues that no federal funding should be used to fund abortions, as he personally believes abortion is wrong. Yet, Planned Parenthood cannot use their federal funds for abortions, due to past political uproars.
So, the $300 million they have been receiving goes directly toward preventative measures, which if used correctly, prevent many abortions from happening in the first place. According to Planned Parenthood, only 3% of their services are abortions. Thus, Mike Pence wants to take away over $300 million from a major healthcare provider for approximately 3% of its activity.
The Pence Amendment threatens to hurt American women (especially the poor ones) in many other ways. It proposes cutting funding for WIC, which provides assistance for nearly 10 million newborns and their mothers. In the planning stages for the new healthcare legislation, there were plans to punish or prevent insurance companies from offering plans that cover abortions.
No matter how you spin it, Pence and his colleagues in the House are rescinding women’s reproductive rights. If women don’t have access to contraceptives, there will be a rise in unintended pregnancy, and a rise in abortion rates. The Guttmacher Institute, a leading researcher in women’s reproductive health, estimates that this measure could result in close to 400,000 more abortions a year. So, not only is this an attack on women’s legal right to chose abortions, this bill will actually reproduce the supposed ‘ill’ it supports to curtail. All around, this bill, and its proposed cuts to women’s health, women’s rights, and women’s issues is complete and utter ignorance.
This bill demonstrates a common problem that transcends America, and it’s the problem of powerful men making decisions about the lives and the bodies of disempowered women. Thankfully, Congresswoman Jackie Speier did speak up in response to Pence and his colleagues by admitting that she had an abortion. Her courageous admission gave voice to millions of women who have had or are considering abortion. It personifies these women, giving the numerical data that Pence has been preaching about, bodies, intellect, and voices.
I don’t want to tell you where you should stand on this issue. As Americans, it’s our right to choose what we want to believe in, and we have a legal right to tell any and everyone exactly how we feel. Whether or not you’re for or against abortion, the Pence amendment threatens to slash funding for women and their children in addition to punishing any facility that even whispers the dreaded A-word.
So, this isn’t just about abortion, it’s about women’s rights. But if you are pro-choice, this is the beginning of a crusade against the right to choose, as a flurry of anti-choice politicians and public figures are launching an assault on abortion. If the federal government turns its back on any group associated with abortion, how far are we from reversing Roe V. Wade?
It isn’t just about women, either. Plenty of men go to Planned Parenthood for support, contraceptives, and information. Unintended pregnancy affects everyone—the women who become pregnant, the family and friends around them, and the men they are in relationships with.
So wherever you stand on this issue, the SLA just doesn’t make sense. Women and their children need access to healthcare, no matter how much money they have or don’t have. Women and men need access to contraceptives and real information about sex—rather they can afford it, and rather their parents want them to or not. Defunding Planned Parenthood isn’t a solution to the abortion problem, it’s just one more way that government is turning its back on us as women.
Sources
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/who-we-are/planned-parenthood-…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/24/planned-parenthood-funding_n_82…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/26/opinion/26sat1.html?_r=1