Take Texas, for example, where the infant mortality rate has spiked in the past five years. Because Planned Parenthood serves as an entry point into reproductive care, by slashing funding, low to middle-income women had a difficult time finding a location to provide services such as a prenatal referral. Texas now has the developed world's highest infant mortality rate, although the remainder of the U.S. performs lower overall.
“That’s the real irony here,” Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards told CNN just after Paul Ryan announced his plans to defund Planned Parenthood along with repealing Obamacare.
She then rattled off a list of avoidable horrors, which occurred as a direct result of defunding the organization.
“We have seen what’s happened in states like Texas where they’ve ended access to family planning services, to cancer screenings. We just saw in Texas a doubling of a maternal mortality rate for women, particularly low-income women, African-American women who have the least access says to care," Richards explained.
According to one recent study these disparities in heath care cost Texas approximately $4.6 billion a year.
"Ironically, I think what they’re trying to do will, if anything, drive up the rate of unintended pregnancy in this country and have exactly the opposite impact of what supposedly they intend," Richards added.
Turning to Ryan's remarks, Richards pointed out that without federal funding, citizens on Medicare and Medicaid with be denied Planned Parenthood services, from birth-control to cancer screenings.
“What it will mean is there are people who count on us for health care, including thousands in the state of Wisconsin, his own state, who will no longer be able to go to the health care provider of their choice, which has been Planned Parenthood for many years," Richards noted.
Original Article
Source: alternet.org/
Author: Alexandra Rosenmann
No comments:
Post a Comment