Seriously, we’re just on a roll, aren’t we? First no gay marriage, then ridiculous abortion restrictions…and now one of our Representatives, Mike Pence, is out to remove all government funding for Planned Parenthood. And it passed in the House.
I know this happened a couple of days ago, but I’ve been in conference la la land, so you get my rage a little delayed.
Feministe summarizes perfectly why we should care:
By law, federal funds haven’t paid for abortions since the 1970s, so the House hasn’t voted to cut abortion funding. They’re cutting funding for the entire Title X program — funding for contraception, cancer screening, STI tests, sex education, mammograms, HIV testing and diagnosis, and pregnancy screening and counseling. Title X is the only federal program dedicated solely to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning and preventive health services, particularly low-income families. Last year, 5 million people benefited from the services funded by Title X.
Planned Parenthood is the target of this legislation, and American women the primary victims. This isn’t about abortion — it’s about cutting access to health care for women. One in five American women has used Planned Parenthood’s services. The vast majority of care — more than 90% — offered at Planned Parenthood health centers is preventative. Every year, Planned Parenthood carries out nearly one million screenings for cervical cancer — screenings which save lives. Every year, Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses give more than 830,000 breast exams — exams which save lives. Every year, nearly 2.5 million patients receive contraception from Planned Parenthood — a service which prevents enormous numbers of unintended pregnancies and, by extension, an enormous number of abortions. Every year, Planned Parenthood administers nearly 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV — tests and treatments which save lives, extend lives, preserve fertility, and maintain reproductive health.
Fuck. Republicans. And Indiana, for spawning this filth. I am more and more ashamed to be associated with this state.
If you want to show your support for this amazing organization, you can sign Planned Parenthood’s open letter to Congress here.
The Planned Parenthood thing is crossing the line. WAAAAAAAAAAY crossing the line.
So are they not even trying to hide that they hate women anymore? This is just absurd.
Wow. Okay.
I always have a hard time figuring out how to respond to stories like this.Emotionally, they enrage me. They turn my chest cavity into a boiler, with its pressure building to a point where I shout (or type) a string of fury-fueled obscenities. But responding by shouting (or commenting) “FUCK FUCK FUUUUCK!” isn’t really useful, and is ultimately completely unsatisfying. I often attempt to vent this rage, and make it useful, by informing others of outrages like this. But those I inform are invariably of like-mind, and relating a story like this more often than not starts to feel like a circle-jerk of anti-conservative sentiment. At least this time I’ve got a petition to sign, for all the good online petitions do.
I sympathize with LS — words just fail me when I hear about nonsense like this. But I’ve signed the petition and will try to persuade everyone I know to do the same.
The good news is that this and pretty much everything the house has wasted time with so far will never make it through the senate and president to become law.
I signed the petition, then made a donation to Planned Parenthood in Mike Pence’s name. *evil laugh*
This is what happens when you let morals dictate your decision-making: you lose your rationality. Mike Pence can have whatever views he wants on abortion and the like, but when he’s making decisions, they have to be based in reality. Cutting out funding to Planned Parenthood because they’re “teh ebil baby killers” is also taking out funding for other valuable (and useful) services Planned Parenthood provides.
For a group that claims that the adore women, dislike Gay marriage but are good with Gays in the “hate the sin but love the sinner” kind of way and want only the best for their womenfolk, Conservative Republicans do a damn good imitation of Women hating Muslim fanatics.
Yeah, but according to the Worthless Piece of Rat Shit demographic, only “sluts” need services like those anyway.
What really drives me crazy is that even if you buy into their bizarre obsession with abortion, the contraception provided by planned parenthood has prevented far more abortions than any of their stupid protests ever have. Sure they are also sort of anti-contraception (at least for the unmarried), but if they really believe that abortion is murder, couldn’t they set that aside in the interest of the greater good? Jesus fuck these people are stupid.
It would seem to me the majority of women would hold close the right to unbiased health care. So why are you all not fighting for this? Why are you not storming the legislature? It seems to me it’s the squeaky wheel getting the grease here. Are you letting the fundamentalists squeak the loudest? Or are they really the majority?
You know, given this:
this:
is true in more ways than one. :/
Oh, not only women. They hate poor people too.
It is time to take it to the streets. Women have forgotten the right not to be suppressed. Revolution is long overdue. I just moved to Florida for my health issues and the care of women here comes under the heading,wait the mens club is not inclined to care. Who is with me on power to the females and a movement in the streets.
As a female living in Indiana who has used Planned Parenthood’s services when I had a temp job with no insurance, I agree that this whole thing is outrageous. Please know not everyone in Indiana is going along with this! I signed the petition right away.
Who voted for this? I want to know who to vote against the next time an election rolls around.
Just another sad day for America. You are going down fast.
great idea
The elimination of those other valuable services is a feature, not a bug. These people aren’t pro-fetus, they’re anti-sex – they’re outraged that women can just go out and have themselves some sex without suffering some horrible debilitating disease. For fuck’s sake, they’re trying to prevent their pre-teens from getting vaccinated for *cancer* because that somehow tells kids it’s cool to be sluts.
I live in his district.*hangs head in shame*
At least the Dems walked out on the union bill http://indiana.onpolitix.com/n…
I am also from Indiana, south bend. (and god how I want out!!) I am furious. I emailed that dick head Pence and asked him if HE was going to pay for my next pap at a grand total of 200.00 at a private practice. This whole state is going to hell. Soon, only the amish are going to want to live here.
[Insert Patroitic music and flag waving.]Republicans are leading us on a bold course to a bright, new Yesterday! We are almost to the Reagan utopia that God promised. First, we need to finish killing those parasitic unions. That will show those Bentley driving teachers what the true rewards of the devil’s education system are!Then we stop giving women folk those special rights such as equal rights and health care. Just because God put the baby oven in their tummies doesn’t give them the rights to play with the dials! And just because they can buy fancy shoes, don’t give women the right to wear them. And after we accomplish these glories advances, we can go after the mother-of-a-liberal-sin-inducing-devil-created inventions — the Steam Engine. If God wanted us to plow our fields with a mechanic helldog, He would not have made child-sized yolks. So join us in our cause, Yesterday is just a day away.
It’s nice to come here and vent but howzabout you go home and talk to your motherfucking aunts, uncles, and Red State relatives about what this kinda shite means?
All of my friends and family already vote Democrat, thank you very much.
If you’ve been reading between the lines for the last 40 years, the Right has been chipping away at anything that empowers women. The ERA (equal rights amendment), abortion, and now birth control. I don’t think they really care about the other kinds of health care as long as they don’t have to pay for it. Equal pay legislation will also be a target when they think they can get away with it. Tax breaks for child care costs, ditto. And so on.
There are few states that don’t do something stupid. Arizona is trying to make it illegal to be mexican, Texas is 49th in education so they decided to cut the education budget, Wisconsin is trying to kill unions because they are minimally effective at stopping corporations from turning americans into wage slaves, etc. I’m not trying to defend Indiana but you can feel slightly better, if only, in knowing that you are not alone in having a home state do something that is monstrously stupid
Well, what good are restrictions against abortion if you don’t promote unwanted pregnancies? I mean, how were you supposed to show what a hard-liner you are if nobody wanted an abortion in the first place?
I’ll paraphrase someone else here, whose name, alas, I do not recall.When you’re trying to decide if the government should fund something, think about this for a minute. Government funds things via taxes. When someone objects to part of their taxes being spent on your favorite cause, if they fail to pay the taxes for it, the government will send armed people to their home to take their property to pay the taxes, and to put them in prison (as Chris Rock said “You don’t pay taxes. They TAKE taxes!”). If they resist too strongly against having their property taken, or being sent to prison, they usually wind up dead (the sheriff takes it unkindly when you point a gun at him in an effort to resist his taking you to prison). So, is what you’re demanding the government do so important that people who object should be killed?Is planned parenthood’s services (many of which I approve of) so important that people who object to being forced to pay for them be killed? Note that we’re not talking about making what planned parenthood does illegal, we’re talking about not forcing people to pay for their services when they don’t want to. Can you not still send money to Planned Parenthood? If so, then what are you complaining about? Oh, yeah, I get it. When YOU want to play dodgeball, EVERYONE should be required to play.But go ahead, keep supporting oppression. Keep demanding that government pay for what you want. Keep demanding that government power grow. Then when your neighbors demand that government make you pay for something you don’t want to, be sure to STFD and STFU. Unless, of course, you’re a hypocrite. Or too stupid to realize that just because YOU approve of something, doesn’t mean that requiring everyone do it isn’t oppression.