This is what Planned Parenthood does.
Each year, Planned Parenthood’s doctors and nurses carry out nearly one million lifesaving screenings for cervical cancer and 830,000 breast exams and its health centers provide affordable birth control to nearly 2.5 million patients and perform nearly four million tests for sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. In total, a full twenty percent of women in America have received care of some kind from Planned Parenthood.
This is what Congressional Republicans are working hard to take away. The House Appropriations Committee’s FY11 continuing resolution completely eliminates the national family planning program (Title X), which supports comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services.
Moreover, the House recently passed Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to the House Republican spending plan. The amendment would bar Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal funding from Medicaid, from HIV screening and infertility prevention grants, or from maternal and child health grants. It would also block funding for breast and cervical cancer screenings.
As Ryan Grim explained in a terrific piece on The Huffington Post detailing the often-surreptious assault on Planned Parenthood, "the assault on Planned Parenthood is one part of the movement against abortion rights. House Republicans proposed banning federal funds that cover abortion in cases of rape if the attack was not "forcible," but backed down after a public outcry. In South Dakota, the GOP was pushing legislation that would appear to make it legal to murder an abortion provider; a Georgia law would make miscarriages illegal under certain circumstances; Iowa lawmakers would allow deadly force to protect a fetus; Nebraska, Virginia, Kansas and Pennsylvania lawmakers are all pushing similarly extreme legislation."
Unless the Senate reverses Pence’s amendment, this ideological attack on a specific health care provider will eliminate the primary and preventive health care on which millions of American women rely.
