Category: Affordable Care Act/Obamacare (Page 3 of 9)
There’s not just one but TWO bills–one in the House and one in the Senate–that are trying to make Planned Parenthood health centers a distant memory. Senator David Vitter (R-LA) and over 80 GOP House members are leading the effort to attack Planned Parenthood’s biggest source of funding under the guise of anti-choice politics. These bills attack all federally funded women’s healthcare providers that offer abortion as an option–but what they don’t mention is that federal law already prohibits any federal funds from being used for abortion.2 It’s a sham.
This ruthless effort is not about taking down “the big abortion industry.” What it really does is diminish women’s access to quality healthcare:
- One in five women in the U.S. has visited a Planned Parenthood health center at least once in her life–often a last line of defense for women in low-income communities who can’t afford to see a private doctor.3
- Abortion only makes up about 3% of the extensive services offered by Planned Parenthood.4 By taking away these vital resources, women would lose access to simple services like birth control, yearly check-ups, STD testing, and prenatal care.
- And family planning providers like Planned Parenthood actually prevent more than 406,000 abortions each year.5
This attack by Congress is dangerous for communities like Ellis County in Kansas, where the local Planned Parenthood was forced to close after they were stripped of their federal funding.6 The health center provided birth control services to over 9,000 women and over 8,000 STD tests–now Ellis County is left without a single public family planning provider. And if the GOP conservatives in Congress have their way, women across the country will suffer the same fate.
But we can win this. Polls show that a majority of Americans think the government needs to stay out of women’s personal decisions.7 Despite the GOP’s Congress takeover, together we can take a stand against these outrageous attacks and send a message that the people won’t back down when it comes to women’s rights.
Tell Congress: Stop the attacks against women’s health! Don’t defund Planned Parenthood.
Thanks for speaking out.
–Nita, Shaunna, Kat, Karin, Adam, Gabriela, Holly, Kaili, Kathy, Onyi, Susan, Clarise, Anathea, Audine, and Megan, the UltraViolet team
Sources:
1. GOP renews funding fight against Planned Parenthood, The Hill, January 8, 2015
Title X Family-Planning Services: Fast Facts, NARAL Pro-Choice America, January 1, 2014
2. Ibid.
3. Planned Parenthood At A Glance, Planned Parenthood, retrieved January 8, 2015
4. Title X Family-Planning Services: Fast Facts, NARAL Pro-Choice America, January 1, 2014
5. Ibid
6. Family Planning Clinic Forced to Close After Kansas Defunds Planned Parenthood, ThinkProgress, May 23, 2014
7. NARAL Pro-Choice America National Survey, NARAL Pro-Choice America, August 9-12, 2014
WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL BOARD
THE MORE circumstances emerge about the deal that flipped control of the Virginia state Senate to Republicans, the seamier it looks. And there’s plenty we still don’t know.
To recap: The Senate was under Democratic control until early June when Sen. Phillip P. Puckett, a veteran Democrat from rural southwestern Virginia, suddenly resigned. At the same time, word leaked that a high-ranking job was arranged for Mr. Puckett at the state tobacco commission, which is under Republican control.
The resignation of Mr. Puckett, whose term in office ran until January 2016, left Republicans with a 20-to-19 edge in the upper chamber. Critically, by shifting the power balance in Richmond, Puckett’s resignation dashed Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s (D) hopes of forging a legislative compromise to expand Medicaid under Obamacare and extend health insurance to hundreds of thousands of low-income Virginians.
Now the FBI is looking into just how coupled they might have been. Virginians have a right to know, too. If it turns out that Mr. Puckett was essentially bribed to resign with the promise of a well-paying job — and shift control of the Senate to the GOP in the bargain — that could be a criminal matter.
Republicans denied suggestions that an unseemly quid pro quo had been arranged; so did Mr. Puckett, who quickly removed his name from consideration for the tobacco commission job. He said he was resigning for unspecified family reasons, as well as to clear the way for his daughter to be approved for a state judgeship; by tradition, the Senate does not approve judges who are related to sitting senators.
However, e-mails obtained last week by The Post suggested that the tobacco commission job, whose duties were to be left largely to Mr. Puckett to define, had been in the works for at least 10 days and possibly a good deal longer. The appearance of a conjunction between his resignation and the job offer was so obviously indecorous that the commission’s chief warned the body’s GOP chairman to “decouple” the announcements.
Julian Walker, government reporter for the Virginian-Pilot, talks with Rachel Maddow about the apparently brokered resignation that will change control of the Virginia senate and breaks the news that the FBI has taken an interest in the matter.
Waldo Jaquith writes..
Puckett was wooed away to run the Tobacco Indemnification and Community Revitalization Commission, which paid $309M to Virginia tobacco producers to persuade them to stop growing tobacco. The organization is funded by the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement, which was the result of a lawsuit that 46 states brought against Altria (née Philip Morris), R.J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard. In 1998, the companies settled, agreeing to pay $206 billion to those states. Virginia’s share is distributed via the state-chartered organization that Puckett will be headed up. And then there’s the company that brought McDonnell down, Rock Creek Pharmaceuticals, née Star Scientific, née, Star Tobacco. Star Tobacco manufactured cigarettes and chewing tobacco, and they remained in the tobacco business straight through 2012, as they sought to rebrand themselves as a pharmaceutical company. (Pharmaceuticals—or, rather, “supplements”—manufactured with tobacco, appallingly.) Although Star Tobacco refused to join the settlement, states ultimately got their money via Brown & Williamson, which manufactured Star Tobacco’s products in their plants. So we’ve got Puckett going to work for the organization that was funded by the profits generated by the company that allegedly bribed McDonnell.
But, wait, there’s more. The tobacco commission actually gave a $2M grant to Star Tobacco to help them promote their cigarettes and chew, appallingly. And—get this—a big part of what McDonnell is in trouble for was that he allegedly tried to persuade the tobacco commission to provide a grant to Star Scientific, by way of funding clinical trials of one of their tobacco supplements at the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University, to provide a sheen of legitimacy to what is now clearly a useless substance.
And it gets better still! The chairman of the tobacco commission is Terry Kilgore, the Republican legislator who is said to have struck the deal with Puckett. Kilgore’s twin brother, Jerry Kilgore, isn’t merely a former attorney general of Virginia, but he’s also the attorney representing Johnny Williams, the CEO of Star Scientific, in the McDonnell case.
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