The war on women continues

[leora]

New Hampshire now denying antibiotics to poor women with urinary tract infections, because hey, they can. Article. And yes, that was the blindingly obvious consequence of the law. When you defund health care for poor women, you are defunding health care for poor women. What did people expect would happen?

Comments

[elenbarathi]

Especially, what did poor women expect would happen, when so many of them refuse to even vote, let alone to learn about the candidates and the issues, or to exert any pressure on their elected representatives? Sure, there's a big outcry now, after the dirty deed has been done, but how many of the temporarily-politicized are going to pay any attention to what their representatives are doing this time next year?

The blindingly-obvious consequence of the poor letting the rich make the laws that affect them is that those laws are not likely to be to their advantage.

[leora]

It is, unfortunately, true that many poor people vote against their own best interest. In fact, many people vote against their own best interest. But I don't generally blame them, since we've been making huge cuts to education, and it's always been the case that education for the poor is of lower quality. Without a good education, it is much more difficult to understand or realize this. It's easy for those of us who have managed to become well-educated (whether we had money or not, as there are always exceptions) to see the connection and realize what is necessary. I just feel it gives us a greater responsibility to protect those who do not have that advantage.

[chaos_by_design]

This whole thing just scares me. Why do these people hate the idea of poor women getting healthcare? Why do people hate the idea of women having sex and not getting punished for it? It's so twisted.

[siderea]

It's worse than that. Denying antibiotics to poor women wasn't a side effect of defunding anything. According to the article you link, in addition to the defunding, Planned Parenthood was "stripped [of] its authority to dispense low-cost birth control and antibiotics to uninsured patients." That is, even if they make up the budget shortfall some other way, they can't use that money on birth control and antibiotics. If that article is correct, they are not allowed to provide those resources to uninsured patients.

[leora]

A fair point. I was sad when I wrote the post, and it truly is worse than my brief summary. I really hope it gets changed.

[dolohov]

It seems to me that they're trying to drive people away from using Planned Parenthood for everyday things so that they can come back later and say, "See, Jon Kyl was right, 90% of what they do is abortions." (Having stripped them of their ability to do much of anything else)

This particular NH Congress is absolutely ridiculous -- they made a lot of noise about taxes to get elected, and have proceeded to basically dismantle the state. This is the same group, remember, who tried to disenfranchise college students.

[dolohov]

Huh. On reading more closely, this wasn't actually our idiot Congress -- it was the little five person Executive Council that's supposed to be purely technocratic. How utterly bizarre.