This week, the GOP started a huge push to take away federal funding for a lot of (in my opinion) essential government programs. I'm not going to get into all of them, because my boyfriend Paul Krugman did it better here but one cut that frankly isn't getting talked about nearly enough is the move to entirely defund Planned Parenthood.
First of all, crazies, there's no federal money paying for abortions, that's illegal. Considering that abortion is still a legal and often lifesaving medical procedure, that's bullshit, but moving on. The federal money that Planned Parenthood gets is for things like pap smears, breast exams, HPV shots and other important routine women's health care and checkups. You know why women have to go to Planned Parenthood for their mammograms? Oh right, because the GOP fucked women on the healthcare thing too. Sick.
Now, the anti-abortion thing I can understand. I don't agree with it, but it's a viewpoint I can at least wrap my brain around. What I can't understand is why anyone thinks it's a good idea to take away access to condoms, birth control, checkups, vaccines, and other health care options. Because you know how you prevent abortions? By reducing the number of women who get pregnant. You know how you do that? Access to birth control. You know what's expensive? Breast cancer. You know what's cheap? Mammograms. You know what sucks? Terrible complications from STDs. You know what's cheap? Condoms, or if it's too late for that, penicillin. THIS IS NOT THAT COMPLICATED.
I'm going to stop yelling at the Republicans, because obviously John Boehner doesn't read this blog. But ladies. Ladies. Wake up. Our generation was born fifteen years after Roe v. Wade, and considerably after the advent of safe and effective hormonal birth control. And if you want to go back further than that... two hundred years ago, if you had sex you probably got knocked up, and if you got knocked up you had to a.) give birth, which would probably kill you, or b.) have a horror show back alley abortion, which would also kill you. If your husband got the clap at the whorehouse, you got some too. If you had your period you stuck some rags in your underwear and went back to your back-breaking life. You would pop out kids until your body gave out, and then there was a pretty good chance you would die. Women only got so far behind in the historical sense because they were concentrating on making sure that their uteruses didn't kill them.
And now, we have all the technology to make sure that we only have babies when we want them, and to treat STDs, and to catch deadly cancers early on, and our own government is about to take away a lot of women's access to all of that. We've gone our whole lives thinking that our reproductive health is a given, but it's not. We still have to fight for this. Which again, is bullshit, but that's the world we live in. There is zero doubt in my mind that this is sexism. If you want to keep a woman down, you take away her autonomy over her body, plain and simple. (If we can keep young and/or poor women down, so much the better!) Fact is there are still people running this country who would like nothing more than to see us all barefoot and pregnant. We have to realize that if we don't sit up and pay attention, these people are going to slowly but surely take away the rights that generations of women before us fought and sometimes even died for. Women's rights are human rights, for the billionth fucking time.
So whether you're a woman or just someone who happens to think that women are also people, please sign this petition and send an email or make a phone call to your representative. Encourage your friends and family to do the same. And if you have some disposable income, send a few bucks PP's way. We've come way too far to let this happen, and we need to tell Congress we're not putting up with this bullshit.
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