http://socialistaction.org/women-protest-attacks-on-planned-parenthood/
Women protest attacks on Planned Parenthood
Published September 30, 2015. | By Socialist Action.
Oct. 2015 Parenthood
By CHRISTINE MARIE
On Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, women in at least 90 cities around the
United States demonstrated in defense of the health provider Planned
Parenthood. “Pink Out Day,” the organizers state, provided the
opportunity to say: “Listen to over a million Americans who are sick and
tired of the relentless attacks on reproductive health care. Listen to
the one in five American women who has received care at a Planned
Parenthood health center … Tell anti-abortion extremists and politicians
that we are everywhere and we will not let them use fraud and deception
to shut down the health centers so many women rely on for care. … We’re
not backing down, not today, not ever.”
These actions were only one element of the response to an extreme
right-wing campaign to deprive one of the most important sources of
woman’s health for low-income and young women in the country of the $500
million a year in federal funding that it receives mostly through
Medicaid reimbursements and grants. In an electronic version of the
tribunals organized by women in the fight for reproductive rights before
the U. S. Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973, women are countering
the right wing’s attempt to stigmatize abortion on social media.
According to the Guardian newspaper, three defenders of reproductive
justice—Amelia Bonow, Lindy West, and Kimberly Morrison—started
#ShoutYourAbortion on Sept. 18, and tweets quickly climbed into the tens
of thousands.
The demonstrations and social media campaigns are in response to the
latest outrages in an orchestrated campaign of lies and efforts to
defund the health-care provider that took off after undercover videos,
edited to make it appear that Planned Parenthood trafficked in fetal
tissue, began to be posted to Youtube in July. Planned Parenthood head
Cecile Richards testified before a Sept. 29 House of Representatives
hearing that “the outrageous accusations leveled against Planned
Parenthood, based on heavily doctored videos, are offensive and
categorically untrue.”
On Sept. 18, the House passed two sensationalist bills that furthered a
propaganda war on reproductive justice. One bill defunded Planned
Parenthood for a year, supposedly in order to allow Congress to
investigate the organization’s supposed profiting from the sale of fetal
tissue. The other bill was a piece of legislation designed to convince
the public that doctors who perform abortions are often the murderers of
fetuses who “survive” the procedure.
Both bills were introduced by conservative “moderates” who hoped to
assuage right-wing “radicals” determined to link defunding of Planned
Parenthood to the big spending bill that would provide government
operations funding for the fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1 and a
potential government shutdown. The Senate defeated the Republican
efforts to use the funding extension bill to cut off Planned Parenthood,
but both houses continue to look for ways to mollify the right-wing
“radicals.”
Even though defunding bills, no matter what the form, are likely to be
vetoed by President Obama, a member of the House Republican leadership,
Steve Scalise, told The New York Times, “We’re going to keep attacking
this (abortion) on many fronts” (Sept. 24, 2015). This includes
legislation being introduced in the states. On Sept. 1, the governor of
Louisiana ended that state’s contract with Planned Parenthood, ending
service for 5200 Medicaid patients. The Wisconsin Assembly voted on
Sept. 24 to ban the state from using federal family-planning money from
going to Planned Parenthood.
The Republican presidential debates have also been the occasion for a
level of virulent and misogynist attacks on female dignity and
reproductive justice that have not been heard on mainstream media since
Roe v. Wade became the law of the land more than four decades ago.
Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has never proven itself to be a
reliable defender of abortion rights. The willingness of Obama to throw
women under the bus during the Affordable Care Act debates was only the
last of a string of concessions to reactionary thought that began almost
as soon as abortion was legalized.
The most devastating blow to availability of reproductive choice began
in 1976 with the passage of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited the use
of Medicaid funds to pay for abortion. This has meant that one out of
four women using this health support funding has been forced to carry an
unwanted fetus to term. Versions of the Hyde amendment have been
attached to spending bills under both Republican and Democratic
majorities and presidents for nearly 40 years.
The current right-wing “radicals’” attack was made possible by the
failure of both capitalist parties to accept the Supreme Court’s
recognition of the power of the women’s movement, in the streets, during
the 1960s and 1970s. This political failure has not only impacted the
availability of abortion but the availability of women’s health care in
general.
Today, according to a study commissioned by Congress, created by the
Guttmacher Foundation and using 2010 statistics, Planned Parenthood
serves 36% of the 6.7 million women that get contraceptive care from
“safety-net family-planning health centers.” In 11 states, Planned
Parenthood serves more than half of the women getting this kind of care.
The other “safety-net” providers serve far fewer women, offer a much
narrower range of contraceptive methods, less frequently offer oral
contraceptives on site, and are less likely to offer same-day appointments.
The organization’s ability to provide nearly same day service means that
for low-income women, Planned Parenthood is often the most easily
accessible care for ailments not only of the body but for all kinds of
everyday anxieties arising from the effort to organize one’s ability to
survive and thrive in capitalist America.
The recent attack on Planned Parenthood is an especially cruel assault
on the health of the underemployed and youthful unemployed, as well as a
genuine threat to the defense and expansion of reproductive justice in
the U.S. The continuous and insufficiently answered misogyny of those
who have targeted its funding is part of an ideological offensive
designed to whittle away at the support that the majority of Americans
have given to abortion rights since the second wave of feminism and to
create pockets of the population that could be mobilized for assaults on
all the movements for social change and economic justice.
Pink Out Day and #ShoutOutYourAbortion are important first steps in the
effort to counter the latest of these efforts. The movement needs to
move quickly, however, toward mounting the kind of mobilization that
occurred last September when half a million people marched in New York
for climate justice. This is how abortion was legalized and
contraception de-stigmatized, and this is our strongest weapon for their
defense.
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Posted in Civil Liberties, Elections, Women's Liberation. | Tagged
abortion, Planned Parenthood, women's rights.
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