All change is not growth, as all movement is not forward. (Ellen Glasgow*)
Like most of you, the day after our recent presidential election I woke up, not from a nightmare but to a nightmare. We are headed back to darker days.
We no longer have a firewall protecting a woman’s right to be able to choose for herself the number and spacing of the children she will have, if she even chooses to have children. Meanwhile, nearly half the pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned.
Hillary Clinton spoke to the young girls listening to her concession speech saying, “never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.” Yet one wonders how these young women and girls will be able to achieve their dreams when they won’t even have control over their own bodies.
One woman, Ping Zhu, wrote, “I fear that my body will no longer be my own.” Those fears cannot be dismissed.
The vacancy on the Supreme Court will be filled by a president who has said he will choose someone who will overturn Roe v. Wade. While replacing a conservative Scalia with another conservative will not necessarily tip the scales, Emily Bazelon, in the NY Times, noted, “Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83. Anthony Kennedy is 80. Stephen Breyer is 78. In Supreme Court terms, four years is a long time.”
The Affordable Care Act will, at best, be changed drastically and tens of millions of people could again be without health care. This will be especially hard on women who have had access to contraceptives including long-acting reversible contraceptives -- some of the most effective forms of birth control -- at little or no cost. If these forms of birth control will even be available in a male-dominated government that views these devices as abortifacients, they will be expensive. Already we hear that women are making appointments to have IUDs inserted before January 20, 2017, and hoping that in five years (the recommended time frame to have them changed) they will be able to have them replaced under a more progressive regime.
Planned Parenthood has long been the target of the anti-choice crowd. Approximately 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s funding comes from federal programs such as Medicaid (health care for lower-income Americans) and Title X (family planning programs serving a similar economic group). Under Medicaid, overseen by the states, reimbursement to the states is 90% of monies they spend on family planning services. Many of the services provided by Planned Parenthood are for screening and treating sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), along with contraception.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, STDs such as chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis have increased throughout the country. They are up 27 percent in New Jersey since Gov. Christie cut $7.5 million from the budget for reproductive health care. Six clinics have closed and many others have had to cut hours.
We are told that if Planned Parenthood clinics close their doors, other health providers will step in and take over. In Florida, where state funding to Planned Parenthood was cut, a list of other providers to pick up the slack included school nurses and dentists. Call a dentist for your next PAP-smear!?
As frightening as the statements of the president-elect are, the actions of Vice-President-elect Pence are even more disturbing. He is by no stretch of the imagination pro-woman or pro-environment. In Congress, Pence got a 4 percent League of Conservation Voters lifetime score. In Indiana, he pushed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. According to the Chicago Tribune, one center that closed was the only place where HIV testing was done, and the county of 23,000 saw an explosion of more than 150 new HIV cases. He believes in conversion therapy, does not favor marriage equality, and voted against fair pay for women and minorities. He is against raising the minimum wage, opposes aid to Syrian refugees, has said condoms won’t prevent STDs and pregnancy, and believes the LGBTQ community doesn’t need protection against discrimination. Oh, and smoking doesn’t kill. In Pence’s state, a woman was convicted of fetal homicide for taking pills to end her pregnancy. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Will women under this administration have to prove they had a miscarriage or face prison time?
What can we do? When federal funding is cut to Planned Parenthood, it will be much more important for states to step in with progressive leadership. We need to support, strengthen, and increase leadership of those at the state level who care about women and the environment.
It is important for us to keep fighting for the planet and the women who nourish it. Advocacy groups such as our own Sierra Club and health care providers such as Planned Parenthood are even more important now. Yes, it is disheartening to work so hard for progressive issues and lose, then be told we have to work even harder. But, if we give up in the face of what seems like insurmountable challenges, we lose twice.
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*American novelist who supported female suffrage in the early 1900's, and who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1942.