Chuck Lindell, of the Austin American Statesman, wrote an
article last week titled “Mistakes raise questions on state-run Women’s HealthProgram” that brings to light some errors in Governor
Perry’s coveted Women’s Health Program. Mr.
Lindell explains that State health officials had to pull down the website, just
a few weeks after they relaunched the program without the use of federal dollars
or its largest provider Planned Parenthood, due to errors in the list of
providers.
This unfortunate “mistake”
left thousands of women confused about how to get health care, thanks to
anti-choice advocates like Mr. Perry. The
Governor's new WHP will include only state approved providers, giving him
control over hundreds of thousands of Texas women and their reproductive
health. Because who knows more about
poor, fertile, mostly minority women than Rick Perry?
Mr. Lindell provides the reader with opinions from defenders
of the new WHP and from advocates of nondiscriminatory health care for
women. State Representative Jessica
Farrar is quoted in the article as saying “This program was never actually
about providing women’s health care services.
It was always a right-wing political vendetta against great organizations
like Planned Parenthood.”
It’s important to know that Planned Parenthood was the
largest provider in the federally funded WHP.
None of the tax payer money that went to PP clinics was used for
abortion care: it paid for preventive health care to ensure good health for mom
and baby, for family planning counseling, annual checkups, and contraception and
for cancer and diabetes screenings.
It’s important to know that in 2011, the Texas legislature and
Governor Perry defunded family planning clinics by two-thirds. This will not save Texas money but instead
result in thousands of additional unplanned pregnancies in a state that already
has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country. These children will then attend Texas schools,
which are among the most poorly funded in the Nation. By defunding family planning and education,
we can be sure to have enough money to send these kids to one of our many dysfunctional
correctional facilities.
This article is worth reading because it’s important to know
that Rick Perry does not care about women or the poor. He has historically toyed with the lives of
Texans to feed his own child-like ego and to ignite war against anything that
he deems wrong or immoral or offensive to the Texas Constitution. He is trying to achieve his goal of crippling
Planned Parenthood, by forfeiting hundreds of millions of federal dollars in Medicaid
that was supposed to go to women’s health care.
This man is destructive and confused and cannot be re-elected.
