Andrea Grimes is a freelance journalist living in Austin with her husband and three cats. She studied new media at New York University and has a master's degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Texas. She is exceptionally talented at finding good-to-great parking spaces.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission has said that it will have absolutely no trouble managing the number of clients in its new Texas Women’s Health Program, according to the department’s own survey. According to everyone else? Not so much.
As any woman knows, finding the right gynecologist is no small feat–but finding the “right” gynecologist is taking on a new meaning in Texas, where reproductive health providers must now show that their politics don’t clash with those of conservative lawmakers if they want to continue to see patients in the Texas Women’s Health Program.
Texas will begin gathering new and more invasive information about abortion-seeking people and abortion-providing doctors in 2013, thanks to new reporting requirements enacted by the Department of Health and Human Services, developed at the request of an anti-choice Tea Party lawmaker.
Texas Governor Rick Perry’s office says it will rely on lawmakers to determine the appropriate punishment for women who seek abortions after 20 weeks if the state succeeds in banning such procedures. Who might these criminals be? Mothers. College students. High schoolers. Domestic violence victims.
Governor Rick Perry pandered to the religious right in favor of a 20-week abortion ban at a crisis pregnancy center this week, touting the horrors of medically unproven “fetal pain” issues, but even right-wing Texas legislative leadership says that anti-choice legislation isn’t the priority for the 2013 lawmaking session.
In two new lawsuits in Texas, Planned Parenthood continues its fight against exclusion from providing publicly funded family planning care, arguing that Texas doesn’t have the authority to keep it out of the new, state-funded Texas Women’s Health Program (TWHP) or to implement the program’s “poison pill” clause which would close the TWHP down entirely should a court allow Planned Parenthood back into the program.
In an effort to show state leaders that it’s possible to have faith both in God and women, a Texas non-profit has launched an online petition signed by hundreds of clergypeople who support contraceptive access. Will it be the push legislators need to institute good family planning policy?
New data from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows that, as a result of conservative-fueled budget cuts, fewer Texans than ever are receiving family planning services, and at a higher cost than ever per client. This is fiscal conservatism, Texas-style.
After just four months on the job, Texas’ new top public health bureaucrat has said he doesn’t believe in Texas’ high uninsurance numbers, blames good weather for Texans’ ill health, and has hired an adviser who hates children’s Medicaid. Welcome to the future of public health care in Texas.
Women and gay people of Texas, take heart: Tea Partying state senator Dan Patrick has not forgotten you! No, taking away your rights and privileges as human beings is still a cause as near and dear to him as ever. His recent actions give us Texans a peek into what we can look forward to in state politics in 2013.
