Pizza Diavola

Via Paul at Shakesville: WASHINGTON – House Democrats are likely to jettison family planning funds for the low-income from an $825 billion economic stimulus bill, officials said late Monday, following a personal appeal from President Barack Obama at a time the administration is courting Republican critics of the legislation.

The provision has emerged as a point of contention among Republicans, who criticize it as an example of wasteful spending that would neither create jobs nor otherwise improve the economy.

As the Shaker commentariat point out, this capitulation would be a clusterfuck for many reasons:

Jessika:

… by helping provide birth control and family planning services to low income people – people who may not be able to afford it otherwise – we could be helping them from getting pregnant and thereby avoiding more poverty or getting onto welfare. With so many people losing their jobs, or being cut down to part-time work, I would not be surprised if a lot of women don’t get their birth control filled.

susanstohelit:

And how about how preventing unintended pregnancies NOW saves money on medical bills later? Or that it helps a poor woman keep her job, because she doesn’t have to take time off work to go to the doctor/abortion clinic/wherever to deal with an unintended pregnancy? Or maybe that you’re not FORCING a woman to risk getting pregnant at a time when her and her family are not financially able to deal with it?

Liss:

This is particularly galling given the fact that “there are almost no women on this road to recovery.” … This was the one area in which women would be the primary beneficiaries — and now it’s gone.

procrastinatrix:

… what drives me nuts is that the American electorate gave the Dems a HUGE mandate, the biggest ever in history for a non-incumbent, for CHANGE, for SUPPORTING poor and working class people to make a living. In other words, WE the people don’t give a shit what the Rethugs want right now!

Access to affordable contraception and reproductive health care are inherently part of health care–one of those pledges that Obama talked about during the campaign (except when it comes to women’s health care, oops, I forgot about that)–and so it is infuriating that while the White House press secretary defended a $200M provision to refurbish the National Mall, Obama personally requested that Waxman strip out the family planning provision (ABC). Urban redevelopment: good. Women’s health: who the fuck cares?

Reproductive health care affects not only women but society at large, as the costs of unwanted pregnancies are passed on through lost worker productivity; exorbitant medical bills unpaid by the uninsured; welfare when a pregnant woman is fired for taking time off; and families that become trapped in cycles of poverty. Personally, reproductive health care is a no brainer for me because (1) I believe in reproductive rights; (2) I believe in a right to health care. However, for the people for whom those aren’t enough, economic reasoning ought to have some sway–except that reproductive health care is seen primarily being about and for women, and who gives a shit about that? Certainly not our new president (am I surprised? No.). I am sick of women being used as a political football.

Obama repealed the global gag rule (Guardian) today via executive order!

President Barack Obama today is to make the most contentious move of his young administration with an order overturning a ban on federal funds to foreign family planning organisations that either offer abortions or provide information or counselling about abortion. …

Family planning groups in America and the UK cheered the rule change. Dr Gill Greer, director general of London-based International Planned Parenthood Federation, estimated the gag rule had cost the group more than $100m for family planning and sexual and reproductive health programmes during the eight years of the Bush administration, which she said amounted to 36 million unplanned pregnancies and 15 million induced abortions.

“The gag rule has done immense harm and caused untold suffering to millions around the world,” she said in a statement. “It has undermined health systems and endangered the lives and health of the poorest and most vulnerable women on the planet by denying access to life saving family planning, sexual and reproductive health and HIV services and exposing them to the dangers of unsafe abortion.”

… repealing the global gag rule is the “most contentious move” of Obama’s three-day administration? Not pledging to close Guantanamo or putting a freeze on all of Bush’s last-minute executive orders or halting U.S. torture? Yes, Guantanamo and torture are horrendous, but I’m surprised that the blowback on that isn’t bigger or considered more significant than repealing the global gag rule, which denies women abortions, health care, information, family planning services, and control over their bodies and futures.

I believe in choice, period. People deserve to make their own decisions about their lives and they deserve to make informed decisions. They deserve to know what’s on the table, what their options are, and if that means having an abortion, they deserve to have safe abortions performed in sterile rooms by trained doctors with surgical tools. If that means carrying a pregnancy to term, they deserve to have good health care, support during and after the pregnancy, and a safe environment for themselves and their children. Choice allows people to decide what they want to do with their lives and restricting choice means controlling people–in case of the global gag rule, people who are complete strangers to its proponents in the U.S., complete strangers–and limiting the options on their lives and futures.

Giving women choice about their health, bodies, and families is considered controversial–and that astounds and enrages me. If you don’t like abortion, the solution is simple: don’t have one. That option is your choice. Having an abortion is my choice. You do as you prefer and I do as I prefer and we’re both happy–because if I were to have an abortion, that doesn’t affect an anti-choicer’s life at all. There is nothing controversial about choice, except in the minds of people that deny women their basic humanity and ownership of their own bodies.

An interesting post about abortion that I meant to link: Colleen, “Life, Death, and Hypotheticals.”