Gosnell’s clinic is an extreme version of what I call “rogue clinics,” facilities that today prey on women, primarily women of color and often immigrants, in low-income communities.
What does a future without Roe v. Wade look like? In a lot of ways, it looks like Texas, where those who are in the least ideal financial and socio-economic position to provide for an unplanned-for child are the ones for whom abortion–and contraception–is hardest to access.
After 40 years, isn’t it time that our policies reflect real women and real families?
On this 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we honor and celebrate US women’s legal right to abortion, and we reaffirm our commitment to ensuring that abortion is accessible to women everywhere, and that the promise of the decision is a reality for all of us.
For nearly four decades, the Hyde Amendment has limited the abilities of low-income women to implement timely decisions about ending a pregnancy.
If Texas excludes Planned Parenthood from participating in its new state-funded “Texas Women’s Health Program,” 1,748 clients in one city alone–Austin–will have to find new health care providers. That means existing providers, some of which currently see just one or two patients a year, will have to take on about 60 new patients each, even as they deal with a 66 percent cut in overall family planning funding.
There are those who assert that unintended pregnancy is not a health condition and therefore prevention of unintended pregnancy is not preventive health care. From my personal practice I can say that I cannot disagree more.
The Associated Press reports that a federal judge ordered Kansas “to immediately resume funding a Planned Parenthood chapter on the same quarterly schedule that existed before a new state law stripped it of all federal funding for non-abortion services.”
While Indiana’s anti-abortion Republicans (and a select few Democrats) dig in their heels, thousands of people who use Medicaid to pay for birth control, STD testing and treatment, cervical cancer screening and breast exams are at risk.
Ready for some welcome news? Today, Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed the Family Planning Works Act into law, which will make free Medicaid family planning services available to 33,000 more low- and moderate-income women there.
