Last week, North Carolina’s Governor Bev Perdue (D) vetoed a budget passed by her state’s Republican legislature that cut all funding for Planned Parenthood. The Republicans overrode her veto.
Last year the same pattern of pass/veto/override occurred, but a Federal judge stopped the defunding of Planned Parenthood by saying that a state may not target a particular health care provider simply because it advocates abortion rights since, though abortions cannot be paid for with federal money, they are legal under federal law.
This year, the Republican legislature is attempting to get around the judge’s ruling by not naming Planned Parenthood openly. Instead they use language prohibiting the state from contracting with “private providers” of family planning services. Since Planned Parenthood is the only organization in North Carolina that fits this criteria, the result is the same.
what eye thynk: Will these people never give up? This new budget language is nothing but a blatant attempt to scam the court into overlooking their prejudicial stand on a woman’s legal right to choose.
And North Carolina is not alone in this. Recently, Ohio abortion foes got language added to Governor John Kasich’s budget review bill stripping Planned Parenthood of 1.7M in federal money that was to be used for health care in that state. Since federal money cannot be used to pay for abortions, what do they think they are actually accomplishing?
As a side note, this is money that you and I pay as taxes that is supposed to come back to us in services--services to which these legislators are denying us access. If our state refuses the money, we don’t get a refund; it just becomes money we threw into the wind and for which we gain no benefit.
This Republican anti-abortion posturing may look good to their religious conservative fan base; but, in the end, they have achieved nothing in their war on abortion rights and, in fact, may be making it worse. By defunding Planned Parenthood, these conservatives are not only denying poor women in North Carolina, Ohio and other states basic health care, but also their access to contraception.
Less contraception can only result in more unwanted pregnancies. And more unwanted pregnancies can only result in more abortions--which Planned Parenthood will still be providing using the same private funds they were using before this legislative finagling started.
States have to balance budgets and in a down economy, the first thing to go are pleasure-related things, such as contraception. Remember, sex is something people do for pleasure, therefore it is natural that such subsidies be cut before programs such as food stamps or healthcare money that goes to things such as the operation of emergency rooms.
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ReplyDeleteThat may be true, but these states are not cutting Planned Parenthood's funding in an effort to balance their budgets.
They are rejecting funds that are already allocated and available from our federal government for use under Title X of the Public Health Service Act.
Money that is rejected in places like North Carolina and Ohio can be redistributed to other states. Their rejection isn't saving anything since the money isn't coming from state coffers. Defunding Planned Parenthood of federal money really has no effect on a state's bottom line.