Go To Hell-th Care Bill
FEAR THE WALKING DEAD! The zombie Senate hell-thcare debacle has risen from the grave to feast on the flesh of the currently insured! GOP Senators voted to open debate on a bill without knowing what bill it would even be! Not that every variation isn’t a disaster. In its various permutations, this mutant abomination of a bill treats people like shit and women like less-deserving shit. Last night they voted down the so-called “Clean Repeal,” but GOP Senators are going to be throwing versions of it at the wall until one of them sticks. One way or another, it’ll throw at least 22 million more people off of their insurance. Maternity care will no longer be an essential healthcare benefit. It won’t let tax credits be used for insurance that covers abortion, or decimates Medicaid that pays for half the births in America, and completely defunds Planned Parenthood, endangering all kinds of family planning and women’s health services. Fittingly, the only two GOP votes to end this nightmare came from female Senators—something some of their male colleagues have pointed out. In any of its various forms, this bill is bad for everyone and worse for women.
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Things That Go “F*ck You” in the Night
NIGHT TERRORS: Partying late into the night as part of their anti-abortion special session BAN-AROO festival, the TEXAS Senate passed a bill that should deny cancer and HIV screenings to millions of people. Whoo hoo! UNBORN RULE! Passed after midnight, the bill bans state and local governments from ANY contracts with abortion providers. SO IF YOUR TRUSTED HEALTHCARE PROVIDER OFFERS THE FULL RANGE OF REPRODUCTIVE CARE, INCLUDING ABORTION, you can kiss that cervical cancer screening goodbye, along with pregnancy care, contraception, and other services that reproductive healthcare clinics provide. Because purity! And this is only one of the toxic stew of anti-choice measures that lawmakers are stirring up in the dark of night to spring on Texas. Night, night!
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KY Clinic Remains Chill AF Despite…Well, Everything
UNFAZED: The SHEROES and HEROES keeping the last clinic standing in KENTUCKY are themselves still standing tall! And that’s despite harassment that has gone OFF THE FUCKING CHARTS. The monsters at Operation Save America have sent out fliers with pictures and addresses of clinic staff. They distribute their “Wanted Posters” and agitate in the neighborhoods where the staffers live. And they know EXACTLY what they’re really doing. As the Louisville Clinic Escorts point out “The only reason to do a mass mailing saying ‘this person kills babies’ is to get that person hurt or killed.” God bless those who are willing to stand up to that kind of intimidation in order to provide care! It happens at one level or another all over the country–Support your local clinic!
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OMG Some Good News in the Middle of This Sh*t Storm
EMPOWER TOOLS: Free your uterus! DELAWARE is out with a FUKKING BADASS program to provide FREE birth control to women in the state! The Be Your Own Baby website will hook you up to nearby health centers, give you information on birth control methods, and even arrange a free lift if you need one!
And if you’re uninsured, they’ll pay for the costs of your doctor appointment. The program is from the nonprofit Upstream USA, and the promo videos are more Beyonce than PSA. That’s helping attract the young women the program wants to reach. Delaware’s teen pregnancy rate is 60 per 1,000 women aged 15-19 compared to a national rate of 52 per 1,000. Bottom line–Planned Parenthood locations in Delaware noticed a significant increase in women seeking birth control after the website launched. With all the bad news recently—it’s great to see people MAKING good news!
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#ExposeFakeClinics
Becky with the Vaginal Ultrasound
Did you catch her saying, “If you’re not very far along in your pregnancy, we’ll also need to do a vaginal ultrasound?” Well, Nurse Becky was kinda fibbing right there. She doesn’t need to do a vaginal ultrasound. She wants to do it, because that’s the only way to get an image of an embryo before about seven weeks pregnancy when it can be picked up on a regular abdominal ultrasound. …
A real medical care provider like Planned Parenthood might do a transvaginal ultrasound to determine if a patient is a candidate for a medication abortion. An obstetrician might perform one to diagnose uterine fibroids or an ectopic pregnancy. But A Place For Women isn’t a medical care provider, although it has a nurse and a radiologist on staff.
