States slash birth control subsidies as federal debate rages

[NJMaverick]

Quote:(Reuters) - Even as a national debate rages over contraception insurance, tens of thousands of low-income women and teenagers across the United States have lost access to subsidized birth control as states slash and restructure family planning funds.

Montana and New Jersey have eliminated altogether their state family planning programs. New Hampshire cut its funding by 57 percent and five other states made more modest program trims.

But the biggest impact, by far, has been in Texas.

State lawmakers last fall cut family-planning funds by two-thirds, or nearly $74 million over two years. Within months, half the state-supported family planning clinics in Texas had closed.

The state network, which once provided 220,000 women a year free and low-cost birth control, cervical cancer tests and diabetes screenings, will now serve just 40,000 to 60,000, officials said.

Another 130,000 low-income Texas women who get free exams and contraceptives through Medicaid could lose those benefits by month's end, due to a dispute between the state and federal governments over whether Planned Parenthood should be allowed to serve women on that program

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/0...VY20120302

[There Is No Spoon]

Republicans simply despise women.

It's that simple. Vote for us, or we'll destroy you.

I hate Republicans.

[jaxx]

While the US Congress screws around with women's issues, the states are busy passing bills to make women's health become obsolete. The red states are doing their best to stick their long religious noses into the lives of the people and to rewrite laws to match their bible beating.

WTF to do? As long as the nuts keep the wingers in power in the states and the US Congress we are being sidelined. I think we are insidiously being overtaken by the rightwing radicals who dare to do anything. How many lawsuits can the DOJ bring, how effective are they, and what to do in the meantime? Maybe class action suits by the people in the states, per issue, would do something. It is beyond the occasional state stupidity now, it's becoming epidemic.