20, September 2015 Bobby Jindal & Planned Parenthood
A desperate un-hyphenated Gov. Bobby Jindal
of Louisiana is lobbing verbal grenades at Donald Trump and Planned Parenthood
hoping to attract media attention – with few results.
Jindal and the House Freedom Caucus are
threatening to shut down the government if its members fail to defund Planned
Parenthood of $500 million in annual federal grants. So what services does
Planned Parenthood offer which have stirred the wrath of so many Republicans? Besides family planning, it offers everything
from breast exams to screening for sexually transmitted infections. There has
been virtually no pushback from Americans desperately needing such services
because most of its patients live in poor or rural areas.
Responding to pressure from his Republican
base, Jindal cut $730,000 in
Medicaid reimbursements to his state’s two Planned Parenthood clinics, neither
of which offers abortion services – a hot button issue with Republicans.
Bad things often happen when Planned
Parenthood clinics are forced to shut down or driven out of state. When an Indiana county drove out Planned
Parenthood in 2013, there was a huge spike in H.I.V. cases prompting the
governor to announce “a public health emergency.”
Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and
policy at George Washington University, observed that when Texas blocked
Planned Parenthood grants it resulted in a dramatic rise in unwanted
pregnancies.
No comments:
Post a Comment