Something the previous items raise is how amazing it is how much right wing outrage is devoted to topics that in some way revolve around sex or sexuality. Even in the case of same-sex marriage, no matter how much they blather on about the Bible or what God ordained or tradition or whatever, you can't escape the fact that a lot of the opposition arises from the fact that they just find the idea of gays or lesbians having sex as, the technical term is icky. I really wonder how much of the opposition would remain if there was some way to insure that married same-sex couples remained celibate.
But it's not just that - all the things that appear to move right-wing pseudo-Christians the most, the things that really get their holy roller juices going, seem always to relate somehow to sex, particularly women's sexuality, which includes abortion and birth control, both of which involve women having greater control of their sexual lives. Face facts: The battle over contraceptive coverage has nothing to do with condoms.
Years ago, people were warning that the assault on access to legal abortions was just the first step and successes there would only encourage the fanatics to go after birth control. To many, that seemed like a ludicrous idea: Access to birth control was so well established that it seemed like it was impervious to attack. But the on-going assaults on the nation's largest provider of family planning services - Planned Parenthood - shows that the warnings were spot on.
The latest attack comes in Texas, where a state judge ruled on December 31 that the state can go ahead and cut off state funding to Planned Parenthood's health care programs for poor women.Last year, the Texas legislature passed a law stripping away state funding from any "affiliate" of a provider of abortion services, an "affiliated" group being defined as one that supports abortion rights. That is, you don't have to provide abortions, you merely have to say that women should have access to them to run afoul of this bit of backwater brain rot.
Planned Parenthood of Texas had been receiving state funds as reimbursement for providing basic health care to nearly half of the 110,000 poor women who were covered by the state's Women's Health Program. But the law would cut off those funds. Planned Parenthood sued, claiming it violates the constitutional rights of doctors and patients. As part of that, it sought an injunction against the law going into effect.
Now, however, state judge Gary Harger has denied that motion, finding that Texas may exclude otherwise qualified doctors and clinics from receiving state funding if they advocate for abortion rights.
Apparently the idea of freedom of speech has not penetrated the borders of the state of Texas.
The suit will go forward, but the ban on funding goes into effect for now.
Gov. Rick Perry claimed the ruling "finally clears the way for thousands of low-income Texas women to access much-needed care." I'm not sure what "way" is being "cleared" for the 48,000 poor women who now have to scramble to find new clinics and doctors in a state that already has a shortage of primary care physicians willing to take on new patients who rely on state-funded health care. Then again, we are dealing with a man whose hair has a higher IQ than he does.
As a quick footnote, in May 2011 Indiana became the first state to deny Planned Parenthood Medicaid funds for general health services including cancer screenings because its services include abortions. In June 2011 a federal district court issued an injunction against the law, saying Indiana didn’t have authority to exclude a medical provider that qualifies for Medicaid and that the law violated patients’ right to obtain medical care from the provider of their choice. That injunction was upheld this past October by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. So there is still hope that even in the darkness of Texas a light may yet shine.
Sources:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/texas-judge-oks-ban-planned-parenthood-funding-article-1.1230888
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/court-blocks-ind-defunding-planned-parenthood-article-1.1190280
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