A new study finds that without Planned Parenthood “tens of thousands of low-income Texas women could lose access to affordable family planning services and to other women’s health services.” Meanwhile, the State of Texas is trying to make up for a provider gap it has contended didn’t really exist.
A new New England Journal Of Medicine study finds that 53 clinics in Texas have closed as a result of cuts to family planning programs, with dismaying results for the health of women.
Yesterday in a packed auditorium at the Texas Department of State Health Services, legislators, doctors and other supporters of Planned Parenthood gathered to speak out–sometimes through tears–against proposed rules that would bar Planned Parenthood from participating in the state’s Women’s Health Program.
![Rally in Austin, outside the Texas Dept. of Health. [img src]](http://rhrealitycheck.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/../../files/teaser-images/2012-04-03-grimes-187x125.jpg)
When clients come to the Downtown Planned Parenthood Clinic in Austin, Texas, they’re coming to get what they’ve always gotten: contraception, cancer screenings and STI tests. But what they’re getting, if they’re on the newly defunded Medicaid Women’s Health Program, is bad news: Planned Parenthood can’t see them any more.
What will it look like to have no federal Women’s Health Program in Texas? That’s what the state department of Health and Human Services began figuring out last week when Governor Rick Perry and Texas lawmakers opted to cut Planned Parenthood out of the Women’s Health Program in the state.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of Texas lawmakers, as many as 400,000 Texas women will have no or greatly reduced access to basic preventative and reproductive health care beginning today.
