{"id":6871,"date":"2006-03-16T12:29:28","date_gmt":"2006-03-16T17:29:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6871"},"modified":"2006-03-16T12:29:28","modified_gmt":"2006-03-16T17:29:28","slug":"the-right-is-still-fighting-against-contraception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-right-is-still-fighting-against-contraception\/","title":{"rendered":"The right is still fighting against contraception"},"content":{"rendered":"

It seems hard to imagine, but in Missouri, state GOP lawmakers have voted to ban county health clinics from providing family planning services<\/a>. This isn’t about access to abortion — it’s about access to contraception. It may be the 21st century, but based on some of the comments from the legislature<\/a>, you wouldn’t know it.<\/p>\n

An attempt to resume state spending on birth control got shot down Wednesday by House members who argued it would have amounted to an endorsement of promiscuous lifestyles.<\/p>\n

Missouri stopped providing money for family planning and certain women’s health services when Republicans gained control of both chambers of the Legislature in 2003. But a Democratic lawmaker, in a little-noticed committee amendment, had successfully inserted language into the proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 that would have allowed part of the $9.2 million intended for “core public health functions” to go to contraception provided through public health clinics.<\/p>\n

The House voted 96-59 to delete the funding for contraception and infertility treatments after Rep. Susan Phillips told lawmakers that anti-abortion groups such as Missouri Right to Life were opposed to the spending.<\/p>\n

“If you hand out contraception to single women, we’re saying promiscuity is OK as a state, and I am not in support of that,” Phillips, R-Kansas City, said in an interview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s rather breathtaking. Under the GOP approach, even low-income married people<\/i> would be unable to access birth control at public health clinics — because the right believes it’s “immoral.” They weren’t kidding.<\/p>\n

State Rep. Kate Meiners (D) noted, “It’s going to have the opposite effect of what the intention is, which will be more unwanted pregnancies and more abortions.” Unfortunately, reality-based arguments like these had no place in the legislative debate.<\/p>\n

We’ve all heard the “so goes Missouri…<\/a>” line; we can only hope it’s not the case this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems hard to imagine, but in Missouri, state GOP lawmakers have voted to ban county health clinics from providing family planning services. This isn’t about access to abortion — it’s about access to contraception. It may be the 21st century, but based on some of the comments from the legislature, you wouldn’t know it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}