New Republic - Republican administrations and lawmakers have had Planned Parenthood in their sights for decades, but the new Republican spending law achieves their long-sought goal of defunding the reproductive health and abortion care organization. Between dramatic cuts to Medicaid and the targeting of Planned Parenthood, the measure, passed in Congress and signed by President Donald Trump earlier this month, will have devastating implications for low-income Americans’ ability to access reproductive health care of all kinds.
“We’ve seen this kind of provision for years, and they’ve just never been able to pass it, and now they finally have,” said Katie O’Connor, senior director of federal abortion policy at the National Women’s Law Center. “What makes this really unprecedented is just that it comes at the same time that we’re going to see millions of people lose access to Medicaid altogether.”
The law prohibits any reproductive health clinic that performs abortions and receives more than $800,000 in federal reimbursements from receiving Medicaid funding for one year. Although it does not mention Planned Parenthood by name, it effectively defunds the organization, given its high operating budget. Abortion rights advocates say that the law also may serve as a backdoor ban on the procedure even in states where abortion is legal; the law leaves nearly 200 Planned Parenthood clinics at risk of closure, 90 percent of which are in states where abortion is legal.
No comments:
Post a Comment