The Hyde Amendment is bad enough. We know that y’all know this but we need to say it again because legit, when we talk about Title X we’re like “YOU CAN’T USE FEDERAL FUNDING TO PAY FOR ABORTION.” And we KEEP screaming that. But the thing is… you should be able to use federal funds for abortion. We WOULD debate that and want to. But right now we’re mostly debating this new nonsense about Title X. But again, OK one more time, we should end Hyde.
But OK so Title X! You know that thing where you try the same thing five hundred times and it never works and it always ends up hurting people? That’s the government’s relentless quest to defund Planned Parenthood. Their newest plan was to make it so you couldn’t even MENTION “abortion” or smishmorstion to your patients. A real classic “we don’t know what we’re doing but this will ignite our idiot base of anti-abortion ors” move.
The only issue is it’s going to hurt literally everyone that Title X was supposed to help.
It’s going to shut down clinics. It’s going to make it so people can’t get HIV screenings (the Mike Pence special if you will) or other STD tests, it’s going to make it so reproductive health issues go undiagnosed. And we can say that definitively. It is going to be a disaster. NO MORE using “could” in headlines about this.
We can say it DEFINITELY because IT IS WHAT ALWAYS HAPPENS. Look at IOWA which defunded Planned Parenthood in 2018 and … family planning services declined 73%. Planned Parenthood and other clinics have spent a lot of time establishing care. To think that some bullshit fake clinic could meet the needs that these clinics meet is patently ridiculous.
AND AGAIN WE KNOW THIS BECAUSE WE HAVE ACTUAL EVIDENCE. TAKE THE EFFING HEIDI GROUP! They got money from the state and did not meet any of their goals for number of patients seen or guidance given. And guess WHAT?!?! They’re suing the government now because they want to apply for Title X again but now they also want to discriminate against gay people!
And possibly the … most demented part of all of this, is the fact that the administration is frickin’ trying to say THIS NONSENSE: “[Planned Parenthood] is actually choosing to place a higher priority on the ability to refer for abortion instead of continuing to receive federal funds to provide a broad range of acceptable and effective family planning methods and services to clients in need of these services.” OPPOSITE DAYYYYY! OPPOSITE DAY! The ADMINISTRATION is actually choosing to say that deceiving your patients and not telling them proper medical information and also just their INTENSE personal vendetta against Planned Parenthood IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN PEOPLE’S HEALTH!
Remember this moment forever. Or it will keep repeating itself.