kalikshama
Posts: 14805
Joined: 8/8/2010
Status: offline
|
Women's Health Program rally protests loss of services for poor women
The rally came a day after Gov. Rick Perry directed state officials to begin looking for money to keep program, but people at the Don't Mess with Texas Women rally were not comforted.
A coalition of Lubbock-area health care advocates and community members gathered Friday at Planned Parenthood to call on Gov. Rick Perry and the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to restore the Medicaid Women’s Health Program.
The rally came a day after Perry directed state officials to begin looking for money to keep the program, but people at the Don’t Mess with Texas Women rally were not comforted.
Dr. Anne C. Epstein, an internal medicine physician and sleep specialist and a member of the
Lubbock Board of Health, said she doesn’t believe Perry will find the funding to continue the program. She believes he’s claiming he will for political reasons, and said women in Lubbock will be affected by his decisions.
“Without Pap smears, women are going to die,” she said. “Without birth control, women are going to be saddled with large families. They’re going to be impoverished. Their children are going to be poorly educated. ... The rate of violence will go up, and everybody in Lubbock — Lubbock taxpayers — will pay the price of the worsening economy.”
The Associated Press reported Friday the federal government will stop funding the Texas health program because of a state law that bars abortion-affiliated clinics from getting public money. The federal money, which covers 90 percent of the state’s $40 million program, will be phased out between May and September, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during a trip to Houston.
The announcement came a day after Perry said the state is committed to the program and will find the money to fund it. He issued a letter directing Thomas Suehs, head of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, to work with legislative leaders and identify money to keep the program going if federal funds were halted. Perry did not specify where the funding might be found.
Perry on Friday blasted Sebelius’ announcement, insisting Medicaid rules give states the right to determine which clinics are qualified to provide women’s health care.
Tony Thornton, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Association of Lubbock, said he does not believe it’s possible to fund the Women’s Health Program without hurting other programs.
“I think that is an irresponsible statement to be making,” he said. “I don’t know how he’s going to find the money, when he cut all the programs statewide — not just Planned Parenthood, but every program in Texas that depended on state funding, he cut last year.”
Before the Women’s Health Care Program was cut, the Legislature cut funding for poor women’s health care from $111 million to $37 million, said state Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, who was in Lubbock for the rally. Davis also criticized Perry for pushing the Texas Sonogram Law, which requires doctors to show women images from sonograms, play fetal heartbeats aloud and describe the features of fetuses at least 24 hours before abortions.
“Overnight, 180,000 women — poor women in Texas — lost their access to health care by the stroke of that budgetary pen,” Davis said. “But Governor Perry didn’t see that as an emergency. Instead, what was an emergency in his mind was making sure he intruded upon that precious doctor-patient relationship and put women in a situation of being emotionally tortured when making the most difficult decision they’ve ever been called upon in their lives to make: the choice about whether to terminate or carry a pregnancy to term.”
Rallies such as the one Friday are happening in 11 Texas cities in five days as the Don’t Mess With Texas Women campaign tours in a red, white and blue bus dubbed the Women’s Health Express to show disappointment that politics is interfering in the health care decisions of women.
Last year, the Legislature passed a law making it illegal for the state to provide Medicaid funds to a doctor or clinic affiliated with an organization that provides elective abortions, even if the institution receiving the money does not provide them.
The Texas Department of Health and Human Services announced in late February it would enforce the new state law that could shut down the Women’s Health Program, which provides 130,000 low-income women with preventative health care, including Pap smears, contraception and cervical and breast cancer screenings.
Thornton said all the Planned Parenthoods across the nation have participated in the program for the past five years.
“Now that we have all the numbers they need to prove to the feds that we need the program, it’s time for the renewal,” Thornton said. “They are trying to keep Planned Parenthood out as a Medicaid provider, which we understand is against the federal guidelines. It’s also against the guidelines to eliminate a Medicaid provider, because in Texas, the woman has a choice of Medicaid providers to go to.”
Thornton said it’s tragic Texas residents have to go through this battle for women to get basic health care, which is a human right. Planned Parenthood of Lubbock served 2,200 women with the program last year, Thornton said.
State law already forbids taxpayer money from going to organizations that provide abortions, so groups such as Planned Parenthood have established legally distinct corporations to separate family planning and women’s health providers from clinics that perform abortions. The law about to be enacted goes a step further to make any affiliation between a clinic and an abortion provider grounds for cutting off funding. That can mean sharing a name, employee or board member, even if the two clinics are legally and financially separate.
Alyssa Tochterman, a third-year medical student at the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center, spoke at the rally about her experience seeing local women with cervical cancer.
“There’s several thousand women here who rely on the program,” she said. “We’ll see an increase in the number of deaths due to cervical cancer, which is just ridiculous. We’ll see an increase in unintended pregnancy rates, when we’re already amongst the highest in the state.”
Davis spoke at the rally about her use of Planned Parenthood as a poor, young, single mother.
For several years, she said, it was the only access she had to health care. It helped her prevent unintended pregnancies and allowed her to not be in the situation of deciding whether to terminate a pregnancy.
“I understand how important the health care Planned Parenthood provides is to women who don’t have the ability to pay for health care,” she said.
The Medicaid Women’s Health Program had been expected to close next week.
Lubbock County Democratic Party Chair Pam Brink called Perry’s claim that he’ll find the money for the program “absolute hoo-ha.” She believes he’s trying to limit women’s rights.
“I think it is absolutely imperative women make decisions about their own health care,” she said. “They are full-blown citizens. They don’t need to have the state government imposing themselves on their bodies.”
|
RE: Maddow takes a look at GOP war on women - 
Profile
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread