Do it to her
The Trump administration took aim at Planned Parenthood Friday, issuing a rule barring groups that provide abortions or abortion referrals from participating in the $286 million federal family planning program — a move expected to redirect tens of millions of dollars from the women’s health provider to faith-based groups.
What do we not want religious zealots doing? Anything to do with planning pregnancy.
The change means federally funded family planning clinics can no longer refer a patient for abortion and must maintain a “clear physical and financial separation” between services funded by the government and any organization that provides abortions or abortion referrals. Groups receiving money under the Title X program, which serves an estimated 4 million low-income women, were already prohibited from performing abortions with those funds.
Gotta punish women for being women; gotta make sure women can’t plan their own lives; gotta make women the helpless playthings of chance and rape.
Critics, including 15 governors and the American Medical Association, decried the change as a “gag rule” that would undermine the physician-patient relationship and threatened legal action to block it from taking effect. They have also described it as an indirect way to defund Planned Parenthood, which has long been a target of antiabortion activists as the nation’s largest provider of reproductive care services.
Women must never ever be free.
The Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research center that supports abortion rights, said it expects lawsuits seeking to stop the law’s implementation before it even goes into effect. Senior policy manager Kinsey Hasstedt accused the administration of seeking to “subvert this long-standing and critical program to appease social conservatives and further their ideological agenda.”
The rule takes effect 60 days after it is published in the Federal Register. But clinics will have 120 days to comply with the requirement that family planning and abortion services [be] kept financially separated and a year to comply with the physical separation requirement.
The rule, which was announced in May, was modeled after requirements adopted under President Ronald Reagan but never enforced.
We’re racing backward! Go us!
Pretty much anything. I can’t think of any activity I’m involved with that I want religious zealots doing, except maybe cleaning toilets. I see no reason why they would muck that up.
Ms. Benson – this is not necessarily the exact right thread, but have you seen Michelle Goldberg’s NYT piece on Andrea Dworkin? Personally, I liked it.
I haven’t, clamboy, thank you.