Courtesy of huffingtonpost.com
You can’t make America great again if you intend to suppress the freedoms of women, who are half the population. Last night I watched vice-president elect, Mike Pence, vow to remove birth control subsidies for women under the Obama care act. Why, he questioned, should people whose religion opposes abortion be required to pay for prevention? Why indeed. And why am I, an atheist, forced to pay higher taxes because church property in my state is exempt from the tax rolls? And why, would Mr. Pence conflate birth control with abortion?
My concern here, however, isn’t with the ancient and patriarchal mindset of those who believe a woman’s highest purpose is to remain barefoot and pregnant. I’ll engage in that struggle another day. What I hope to do here is disabuse those 51% of white women, 39% of all women and 97 million people — half of whom are women – of the notion that by refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton in the last election, they engaged in a moral act. They were wrong.
Here, in a two-part essay is a compendium of what these folks have achieved for the elderly, the infirm and indigent women. The source of the information is Ms magazine, Drawing the Red Line edition. “Not Going Back,” by Gaylynn Burroughs, pgs. 25.)
- Obama care made it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate against women. Mammograms, maternity care, domestic violence screening as well as all FDA approved pregnancy prevention methods were provided under that act. Now, Indigent women’s medical benefits are in jeopardy.
- Medicaid is slated for reform. Turned into to a block grant program, costs above the cap will be left for the poor to pay. Services will be reduced and thousands if not millions of people will be dropped from the rolls to reduce costs. Medicaid benefits to poor are in jeopardy.
- Family planning clinics which also provide cancer screening will lose Medicaid funds. This includes clinics that do not provide abortions. Family planning and cancer screening for the poor is in jeopardy.
- The Hyde Amendment, which currently is part of the annual appropriations measure and which denies funding of abortions, could be codified into law. (Click) Abortion services to the poor denied now and into the future.
- Roe V Wade is targeted to be overturned. Previously, the vice-president elect, Mike Pence, pushed legislation in Congress that would allow hospitals to refuse an abortion to any women despite a life-threatening emergency. The right to a life-saving abortion for a woman is in jeopardy.
My sisters who helped bring this shadow into the lives of the elderly, poor women, the weak and the desperate, I salute you.
