First things first, Zero federal dollars are used by planned parenthood for abortions.
So when the government cuts its funding to planned parenthood, what it's cutting is funding for everything else. Well what else does PP provide? Mainly it turns out family planning and cancer screenings.
So mainly what a bunch of old rich white guys want to do is cut funding to an organization that mainly provides cancer screenings for women. What. The. Fuck.
At first blush I thought this must be out of character for the Republicans, but the more I researched and thought about it, the more I realized, no this is exactly within the character of the Republican party.
They've been consistently hostile to women their entire existence.
All you have to do is google what republicans have to say about equal pay, maternity leave, reproductive rights / health care.
If you really want your jaw to hit the floor, google what they've said about rape!
Which leads me to the fundamental question. How can there possibly be any women who support the republican party?
Now I have to admit, I'm an atheist liberal living in Massachusetts and my views are mostly shared by many of my colleagues and thus I do realize that I'm in an echo chamber.
However, I still end up having a virtual conversation with a women that I might run into on the street leaving a republican convention and asking questions like:
"Do you support the idea that women shouldn't be paid equally?"
"Do you support cutting funding for family planning?"
"Do you support cutting funding for preventive care?"
"Have you heard what republicans think about rape?"
etc...
Where I end up falling short in the mental exercise is in my vain attempts to formulate what their possible answers could be. I understand that I have a blind spot in regards to this, and likely there are positions on these topics that I haven't thought about.
As a father of two girls, I fear them growing up into a world that no matter how well educated they are, they'll be financially penalized because they have a vagina. It scares me that they'll grow into adulthood and reproductive options will simply be taken off the table and not because of any scientific criteria, but because of a particular groups moral objections to it. It scares me that their jobs might take them to places where there's no options for preventative screenings, etc.
What scares me even more is these things happening and there being a cadre of women cheering it on.
How many [mothers, daughters, wife's, sisters] living in rural areas where the nearest hospital is hours away in a city, will end up dying needlessly from ovarian/breast cancer because their local PP clinic that didn't offer abortions anyway had to close down because it lost all its funding?
We know that number will not be zero.
