02-18-2011, 07:32 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Eat your vegetables
Super Moderator
Location: Arabidopsis-ville
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Goodbye, Planned Parenthood?
Wow... just... wow.
Congress wants to cut all funding to Planned Parenthood in a rush vote this weekned.
Will the rest of the medical community in low-income areas be prepared to tackle the needs of those who use Planned Parenthood for preventative medicine?
Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/18/us...d.html?_r=1&hp
Snippets below.
Quote:
Planned Parenthood Financing Is Caught in Budget Feud
By ERIK ECKHOLM
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Now, in a surprise step that has set off deep alarm among advocates for women’s health, the newly conservative House of Representatives has proposed cutting the entire $317 million program of aid for family planning, known as Title X, in a 2011 spending bill that is expected to pass by the weekend. A proposed amendment to the bill would also bar Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal funds for any purpose.
Planned Parenthood and its supporters are working to bolster defenses in the Senate. They hope that the Title X program — including a share for their group — will be restored as the two sides of Congress compromise on a spending bill. But supporters like Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado and a leader of the abortion rights caucus, fear that protection of family planning could “get lost in the larger issue of the budget.”
Planned Parenthood has worked to respond... In what Stuart Schear, vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the “most intense short-term campaign, we have ever run,” the group has prompted tens of thousands of its supporters to call or e-mail Congress and organized petitions and rallies.
“These charges make me so angry,” said Judy Tabar, president of Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, which runs 19 clinics in Connecticut and Rhode Island, offering 70,000 patients birth control, cancer screening and other medical services and, for fewer than 10 percent of visits, abortions.
“What we do every day is prevent more unintended pregnancies than anyone else in the country,” she said in an interview at her office in New Haven. “We have a huge impact on the lives of women and families.”
Those opposed to Planned Parenthood and the broader family planning program, its supporters say, have not offered realistic alternatives for poor women.
For every dollar spent on contraception for low-income women, the government saves four dollars in medical costs within the next year by averting unwanted pregnancies, said Ms. Cohen of the Guttmacher Institute.
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__________________
"Sometimes I have to remember that things are brought to me for a reason, either for my own lessons or for the benefit of others." Cynthetiq
"violence is no more or less real than non-violence." roachboy
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