Seems to be that women’s health care services are the new target of the Texas House. Recently, multiple budget amendments have been passed, taking away $62 million from family planning services. That is roughly 2/3 of the money they currently have!
One of the well-known family planning services is Planned Parenthood. Many people think of it as simply a place that provides abortions. However, what they don’t realize is that in the past year “these providers used roughly $47.6 million in funds to provide basic health care to a total of 257,895 low-income clients.” These basic health providers are the reason many low-income women are able to receive the yearly Pap smear, STD checks, mammograms, and forms of birth control.
Many people, especially those Conservative Republicans, don’t realize the good of these facilities. The only thing they see it as, is an abortion facility. The reality is with these new amendments these facilities will be left with about $38 million for a two-year time span. Which is equal to $18 million a year and finally leaves them with only $9 million per year. With this money there will not be much help they can provide to women with no insurance. Ironically, I believe this will only lead to a higher abortion rate. Isn’t this what they don’t want?
The sad truth is we will see many more abortions due to the lack of being able to provide birth control methods and we will see many more women being diagnosed with certain diseases too late for treatment. Guess we will just have to wait and see how this huge budget cut will benefit us in the long run. I believe its just heading towards an even worse situation.
I am totally agreed with my colleague’s comment about women’s health care service. It is unbelievable that they are taking away $62 million from family planning services, when we all know this service is preventing abortions and also preventing those young girls to get pregnant at early ages. Like my colleague said “the Conservative Republicans do not realize the good of these facilities are giving to women.” I do not think $9 million per year is going to help our big women society that we have in Texas, I guess we will see more young girls walking around with a big belly and also it will be more abortions in the next years.
ReplyDeleteNo every woman can afford to get a Pap smear or mammograms every year, how we know medical service in the United State is not cheap, and if you do not have insurance that can cover your needs it is going to be hard to get check annually. I guess Breast cancer and vaginal cancer will increase in the next couple years because the state does not have enough budgets to keep Texas’ women healthy we all know this type of diseases can be prevent if we get check every six or every year, but the Republicans seems to care at all about our health. It is true this $9 million will not provide to the entire woman that come to get this medical service and it makes me really upset because I got friends that goes to planned parenthood to get the medical service they provide there and now they can’t get that service for free because the Texas House had cut the budget.