Missouri Republican Governor Matt Blunt recently announced he's slashing funding for Planned Parenthood clinics that provide free cervical cancer and other health screenings to poor women in the state.
"Patients should not have to go to an abortion clinic to access lifesaving tests," Blunt said in a written statement.
Except for the fact that the affected clinics don't even provide abortions. They do, however, provide cervical and breast cancer screenings -- about 1,500 a year -- paid for under the Show Me Healthy Women program. This just drives home the point that, even though anti-choicers love to characterize Planned Parenthood as an abortion provider only, their clinics primarily provide other types of reproductive and women's health care.
"Gov. Blunt's sudden decision to cut a 15-year partnership to prevent cancer in southwest Missouri is a shocking, misguided act driven by political ideology rather than sound health care delivery," [Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Kellie] Rohrbaugh said in a written statement.
Blunt's timing is awful. Missouri is one of several states considering a bill to make the HPV vaccine (which prevents some types of cervical cancer) a school-entry requirement. If the bill manages to make it through the legislature and lands on Blunt's desk, he's going to face a lot of pressure from his conservative base to veto it.
Here's an idea for Blunt and other conservative governors: If they want to defuse some of the tension over the HPV vaccine, they should seriously step up the public funding for cervical cancer screenings and regular reproductive health care for low-income women. Not that screenings are a substitute for vaccination, but it would go a long way toward showing they aren't totally deaf to women's health concerns.
UPDATE: Sara sets the record straight.
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Can he do that? Doesn't the legislature have to approve (though by the article, maybe they already did.) I hope the potitical fallout he suffers as a result of this is far greater than any kudos he was hoping to receive from the party's supporters.
how insane. what do they think, that they're going to hand the women pamphlets called "if you ever get pregnant, you should abort" on the way out? i'm sort of surprised that they were getting government money at all, though. i'm a volunteer with my local planned parenthood, so i know that some people have really volatile reactions towards the organization.
"Patients should not have to go to an abortion clinic to access lifesaving tests," Blunt said in a written statement.
That has got to be the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Nobody is making anyone go to these clinics for these tests. They don't *have* to go there. But a lot of women can't afford to pay for the tests and thus a place that provides them for free is a valuable service. Taking money away from that service can only hurt. If these tests are so important then maybe the government should work on providing the services for free directly, instead of making them less accessible.
So, his logic is that its better than women receive no medical care and die of breast/cervical/ovarian cancers than that they even enter clinics that might be associated with contraception and abortion services? Even if those clinics offer no abortion services? Women of Missouri--you seriously need to get pissed off right now, goddessdamit! Wake the fuck up and rattle the bars of the statehouse. This man wants you to die rather than deal with women's health issues!!! This man is IMMORAL and hateful. This should not slide.
Terrible. And it sounds like Planned Parenthood could have a case, depending on how the contract was originally awarded (formal bid?). To yank the contract and award it to another provider based on purely political grounds sounds unethical at the least.
I am ashamed to be from MO. God help us. I need to move my parents out of that state.
i don't have anything new to say, really, but just to voice my disbelief, really, and definite disgust. it's really neat to know that elected officials don't want low income women to 'have to' enter a planned parenthood in order to PREVENT CANCER. and by neat i mean tragic.
maybe next this guy will restrict women from breathing, because they might end up inhaling the recycled air of a woman who has considered abortion. and they shouldn't have to do that.
This kind of thing attempts to undermine Planned Parenthood's care of women in order to make the right wing's fantasy, that there really are just "abortion clinics" that do nothing but abortions all day every day, a reality. That way they can pretend that it's not women's health care they object to, because they've done their utmost to divorce abortion from all other forms of women's health care.
And the face that women will no longer be able to go to the places that they're familiar with, and will have to spend time and energy seeking out the new places, and no doubt many of them will get lost in the shuffle? Well, that's just our tough luck.
Presumably, patients shouldn't have to go to abortion providers for access to lifesaving tests, either? Oh, wait, the D&C is the most common medical procedure performed on women. I'm not sure I'd trust an OB/Gyn would couldn't do one.
The biggest practical concern that I can see is that Planned Parenthood was open evenings and Saturdays. The clinics who will be getting the funding are not, and one of them closes early on Wednesdays. So Blunt has made it much more difficult for the working poor to access services they need. I suppose it's better to die than be tainted because
Blunt is just trying to protect the reputations of women whom some people might suspect were seeking abortions. The taint is spreading.Regarding the HPV vaccine, for being pro-choice, you seem awfully keen on the notion of the government forcing women to undergo a medical procedure regardless of whether they want to or not.