A bill passed in the Florida legislature this week would effectively defund Planned Parenthood and other reproductive rights clinics by preventing state agencies from working with any organization that provides abortion care other than that for victims of rape, incest, or if the life of the woman is at risk.
As the bill heads to governor Rick Scott for his signature, several state lawmakers who have insisted that plentiful alternatives exist for reproductive and sexual healthcare have cited a list of health centers that includes dentists, optometrists, and elementary schools.
“I don’t understand how they put this list together,” said Kheyanna Suarez, a student at Florida Atlantic University who first started visiting Planned Parenthood when she was 16. “Were they blind and mashed everything from Google on to one list? A dental office, a Salvation Army, an elementary school – I can’t go and get care at those places. If I have to leave my healthcare up to the places on that list, I am scared. I don’t think an elementary school can prescribe me birth control.”
During a March 2 hearing state lawmaker Lori Berman asked a co-sponsor of the bill for a list of alternative clinics that could provide the same services to those provided by Planned Parenthood.
This is what she received:
The state list of federally qualified health centers that Berman received the next day includes 67 schools ranging from the elementary to high school level.
During the hearing, the bill’s supporters also repeatedly noted that there are 29 federally funded public health centers for every one Planned Parenthood health center in the state, implying that the defunding of Planned Parenthood would have little impact on patients. The anti-choice Florida Family Policy Council, an affiliate of Focus on the Family, and Americans Defending Freedom repeatedly cited this 29:1 ratio in their lobbying for HB 1411.
“That ratio number is based on this list,” Berman told the Guardian, “which is a fallacious list since many of the providers on that list are in no position to provide women’s healthcare.”
And let's not forget that all of this overreaction is based on those doctored videos that have been proven in a court of law to have been falsified and whose creators have now been indicted.
And yet this witch hunt continues on as if those facts simply do not matter.
Because let's fact it, to conservatives those facts simply do not matter.
I suggest women start going en masse to the places on that list and asking for the promised reproductive care AND videotaping the results.
ReplyDeleteBugs Bunny had it right.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IDwpTABJG4
I suggest a lawsuit against the Florida legislature.
ReplyDeleteThere will a lawsuit all right. Florida will lose, Planned Parenthood will stay open and their funding will not be cut off.
DeleteI would add something here, but it would be in capital letters and include colorful swearing.
ReplyDeleteThe guy in blue looks like he's about 4 months along, so I understand why he has an opinion on outlawing abortion.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope each one of those assholes who voted for this "BULLSHIT" contracts a disease that would have been easily taken care of by PP. And that the alternatives they list are unable to help them... before it's too late.
ReplyDeleteSyphilis comes immediately to mind.
DeleteI can't help but think back to when I first walked into my all-girls catholic high school in a suburb of Cleveland in the fall of 1973. Students were wearing black arm bands and I asked what they meant. They stood for opposition to Roe v. Wade. I was in 9th grade and they were in 10th through 12th. They just fell in line. I'm sure some of them fooled around and had a more real understanding of the consequences of sex than others, but most were inexperienced and just happily wore those bands and thought, because of what they were taught by the nuns, that they were special, superior human beings. I never asked to be on a mailing list but now and then I receive an alumni catalogue. It almost always includes a story about protesting abortion, no matter what’s at stake for a woman’s life and that of her fetus. It’s all still in god’s hands. On other pages of the catalogue there will be all these stories about how strong and equal to men females are and how the students and graduates are succeeding in every possible realm, yet when it comes to control over their bodies it is the same old, same old.
ReplyDeleteMost of these fundamentally sociopathic uber conservative 'right to life' folks live in the land of Narnia. They won't be leaving soon. Reality scares the dickens out of them.
ReplyDeleteThere is a very good reason why those of us who are in the political minority, those of us who have the capability to "think", call our State "Floriduh".
ReplyDeleteThere is only so much we can do to change the profile.
The problems do not merely encompass the so-called Florida (White Boy) Crackers, but the regressive pensioners who move down here from Up North once they reach their comfortable retirement (The Villages and others in the much visited Orlando Corridor, anyone?) and vote their "Fuck you, I've got mine" sentiment. Just don't get me going!
I commented last week about Janet Folger Porter, from Ohio but she lived in Florida for years after that before moving back to Ohio, spreading her venom and going nuts pushing her anti-choice crap in Florida. I'm curious. Did you hear things about her there, or was the stuff I saw online built up to make her sound more known than she was?
DeleteI was curious so I Google her. There's a lot on Google. I went to rightwingwatch.com, & read about her there. Good grief, she's a birther & a total nut! Go there & read it. She fabricates negative stories to flame what she doesn't like. She lost her primary bid on March 15th as a state legislature. That's good news, I guess, but who knows what her competitor is like. Ohio is suppose to be a sane state, but I guess the ignorant is taking over throughout our country. Personally, I think the John Birch Society (Koch Brothers) has permeated our society targeting churches, schools etc. I read long ago that that was there plan. A plan that was sparked during the 60s & early 70s when liberal laws & policies were enacted. Ever read the Powell Memo? Google it, it'll make you cringe.
DeleteI thought Jeb shut them down altready? Every planned parenthood building I pass when down there for work is closed and looks like a ghost town.
ReplyDeleteWhy is it that anyone pro life always looks like someone who can't get any action? Gotta love Florida, you got your Disneyworld (The closest you can get to "real people"), surrounded by nothing but retirees who think theirs is the only opinion that matters.
ReplyDeleteDisney: a bunch of underpaid serfs paid slave wages to abase themselves so that a bunch of delusional, shallow idiots can live in a consumerist fantasy of what a fun place actually is at the Fakest Place on Earth.
DeleteThat's a good description.
DeleteOT but an interesting perspective Biblical scholar details misconceptions about the holy scripture's intentions
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chron.com/life/article/Biblical-scholar-says-that-there-there-many-6893730.php?cmpid=email-mobile