Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s “Initiatives to Protect Life” (aka; wars on abortion) aren’t going so well. Perry’s alleged ideals aren’t necessarily firmly rooted in reality, and so he announced, “The ideal world is a world without abortion. Until then, however, we will continue to pass laws to ensure abortions are as rare as possible under existing law.”
The only problem is that Perry and his Republican legislature don’t seem to understand what actually prevents abortions, and thus they set about killing the very services that actually reduce abortions. That fail was then projected to cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars via what Republicans call big government dependency.
Texas Republicans were shocked to learn that their 2011 legislative efforts to defund family planning clinics by 2/3 will result in more unplanned pregnancies and are projected to cost the taxpayers $273 million for low-income births. Who would have guessed that taking away access to birth control would increase unplanned pregnancies? HUH. This is hard.
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The New York Times reported:
Now, amid estimates that the cuts could lead to 24,000 additional 2014-15 births at a cost to taxpayers of $273 million, lawmakers are seeking a way to restore financing without ruffling feathers.
According to the New York Times, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found that more than 50 family planning clinics closed as a result of the GOP attacks. So now Republicans have to find a way to re-fund family planning without looking like they’re funding family planning, because family planning is abortion — or, so they told their base.
Their solution? Instead of funding family planning, they’ll put $100 million in a state-run primary care program but not clarify that the money should go to contraception. This will solve the problem of reducing unplanned pregnancies almost as well as their plan to defund family planning clinics reduces abortions (in reality, it doesn’t; abortions are reduced through family planning, birth control, and sex education – all things Republicans oppose, ironically).
The New York Times quoted Senator Robert Deuell (R-Greenville), a physician, as saying, “It’s a much better way to treat the women because they don’t just have family-planning issues.”
Who’s going to tell Deuell that family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood also often offer preventive care like breast cancer screening, anemia testing, cholesterol screening, diabetes screening and so much more? Also, in point of fact, only 3% of their services are abortions?
ABC quoted Regina Rogoff, the Executive Director of the People’s Community Clinic, an independent family planning provider in Austin (Texas), on the “mind boggling” ignorance, “The ignorance, I think, that is so rampant among the legislative community is mind boggling.”
By the time Republicans are done chasing their ideology to its logical, predictable conclusion, they’ll finally arrive where we have been patiently awaiting them.
We are but halfway there. So far, their hatred of abortion has led them to defund the one thing that actually reduces abortion, while increasing the cost to taxpayers for unplanned pregnancies; thereby actually managing to increase federal dependency on big government programs Republicans claim to hate. So far, this is a big fail as far as ideology goes.
Let’s do the math. Texas Republicans touted savings of $73 million by defunding what they hysterically and inaccurately describe as the “abortion industry” (aka: family planning clinics that provide the actual services that in reality, decrease the number of abortions). Now they’re throwing $100 million at the problem but not really addressing it, in order to avoid the unintended consequence of the $273 million crater they just carved into the debt in order to satisfy their ideological fantasy.
How much money will be wasted while Republicans figure out that throwing money at general care isn’t going to solve the unplanned pregnancy problem, and that indeed, this is why so many Americans support programs like Planned Parenthood. You see, they actually work. Yes, it’s true, no one LOVES abortions. That is why most of the country supports the Democratic platform regarding family planning clinics — because they work. SHHHHH! It’s a big secret also known as evidence via scientific data and if that doesn’t get it, it’s also just plain logic. The purpose of contraception, after all, is to prevent unplanned pregnancies.
This here is not only a failure to communicate, but it’s also a great example of why we don’t always let states run wild with their “rights”. Sometimes the federal government actually gets it right, if only because the chances of the federal government being taken over by fantasy-impaired hysterics are slimmer than they are of a state (like, say, Texas) being overtaken by irrational, “mind boggling” ignorance.
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