Recently the Trump Administration curtailed the funding for Title X programs which provide for women’s reproductive health care service: pap smears, detection of sexually transmitted diseases, and family planning issues. Title 10 was first enacted during 1970 and has never been curtailed.
It is not advisable for this nation to curtail health care services for women, especially women of childbearing ages. It is in this nation’s interest to have policies which support the natural population regeneration processes which ensure that this generation of residents is replaced by a successive generation.
Essential to that natural process is policies which provide health care services to child-bearing women. During the Board of Supervisors meeting of Tuesday, 08.20.2019, District 2 Supervisor Cindy Chavez called for county government to fund reproductive health services such as pap smears, mammograms and birth control for 36,274 women of the County of Santa Clara who will lose those basic services because of a Trump Administration Rule.
“We’re not going to stand by and have these vital medical services ripped from the women that need them,” said Chavez. “We’re talking about the most basic health services for women – birth control, mammograms and pap smears. The Trump Administration is acting irresponsibly and cruelly. In contrast, the County’s core mission is the health of our people, and we will step up for these women.”
Chavez called for the County to pay for the $463,265 in reproductive health services that Planned Parenthood currently provides to Santa Clara County women. This County report was in response to Chavez’ March 12, 2019 request for a County plan just in case the Trump Rule went into effect.
(Source: http://sccgov.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=30&ID=136734&MeetingID=11032).
The services include breast and cervical cancer screening, pregnancy testing, contraceptive care, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment as well as infertility services funded by the federal Title X program.
It is in this nation’s long-term interests to ensure that child=bearing women receive the medical services and support which result in delivery of the next generation of residents. Business and commerce should be interested too because that’s how the next labor force is generated which can be trained to become the next generation of skilled labor.
Title X program funding has never been allowed to be used for abortion services.
Last Friday, the Federal Ninth Circuit Court declined to overturn a Trump Administration Rule that imposed a gag rule on local health providers causing Planned Parenthood to pull out of the Title X program.
What’s happening is the unanticipated consequences of Trump Administration’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood programs because of the alleged birth control & family planning services which ultra-conservatives do not want federal funds to underwrite. The reality is that less than 2% of Planned Parenthood’s efforts are involved in family planning and contraception consultations with their clients.
(Source: https://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/9th-circuit-denies-relief-in-title-x-gag-rule-case.)
Title X was enacted in 1970 with a bipartisan mandate to provide “a broad range of acceptable and effective family planning methods and services,” and it has helped to reduce teen pregnancy and abortion rates. The Trump Administration wants to shift the focus and federal money that goes with that away from birth control to abstinence, fertility awareness and other “natural method” programs that some religious groups favor (and which are not effective).
Ultra-conservatives keep on trying to get the rest of us to live by their accepted standards of reproductive behavior. What transpires between consensual couples is really not subject to governmental control because of the several personal freedoms which our U.S. Constitution ensures. Such as the freedom to assemble; to communicate freely and openly.
Too many ultra-conservatives are really trying to impose their behavioral standards on the rest of us without our personal permission. That imposition will never happen; but then, those ultra-conservatives will never learn.
EO commends Supervisor Cindy Chavez and her staff for their pro-active planning proposals and the Board of Supervisors for approval of the allocation of requested funding.
This is another instance which the ‘2020 Voter’ needs to take into consideration when deciding who to re-elect during 2020 election cycle.
Do plan to vote this coming March 2020 CA Election Primary. EO is just wanting to remind you that CA’s Primary Election will happen during March 2020 and not during the traditional past schedule. DO PLAN TO VOTE: YOUR COLLECTIVE VOTES ARE YOUR PUBLIC POLLICY VOICE. That vote is especially loud when all of us actually vote.
