Thank you, Ohio State Senators Tavares and Turner, for standing up for Planned Parenthood in the Ohio Senate!
There is a perverse conceit among those subverting women's access to competent reproductive health care that only "right-to-lifers" stand up for defenseless life. Does that conceit stem from ignorance and a willful lack of self-discipline to step back and look at each patient's clinical picture? Does it stem from an obtuse arrogance that insists that those who do not share their sectarian beliefs have no morals and therefore cannot come to the conclusion to terminate a pregnancy in the "true" faith? Or does it stem from a cynical opportunism to advance a "holy" cause in order to distract the chumps back home while the would-be crusaders sweep their own misdeeds and malfeasance at the statehouse under the carpet? Whatever the motives, the doctrinaires of the 130th General Assembly have been feeding themselves a line of bull for so long that some of them actually have come to believe it.
Truly ethical medical practice demands that the entire medical team recognize, acknowledge, respect, and act according to the patient's medical reality, her socio-economic reality, her religious convictions, and her informed consent about her health care.
That real patients with real problems suffer gratuitous danger at the hands of interloping fanatics never quite registers with those out to defund Planned Parenthood at any cost -- as long as some other woman must pay the price. What other mentality could possibly explain, for example, how so-called medics let Savita Halappanavar die last year just because she and her husband had made the mistake of moving to "a Catholic country"? If you don't know already how or why Savita Halappanavar died, please DO READ:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20321741;
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Savita-Halappanavars-husbands-detailed-diary-of-days-leading-up-to-her-death-183769781.html;
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/republic-of-ireland/savita-halappanavars-abortion-requests-missing-from-medical-file-16241442.html;
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2013/0118/1224329001402.html;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-20405702;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20779631;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264608/Savita-Halappanavar-Husband-demands-answers-inquest.html;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/02/medics-treating-savita-halappanavar; http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/did-irish-catholic-law-or-malpractice-kill-savita-halappanavar).
Despite the malicious misinformation spread by some, Planned Parenthood does truly good work even when that work includes abortion (http://www.texasobserver.org/we-have-no-choice-one-womans-ordeal-with-texas-new-sonogram-law/). But then, rolling up your sleeves, washing your hands physically instead of figuratively, and actually caring for real patients in real distress in sometimes dire circumstances doesn't leave much time to fend off sanctimonious grandstanding by medically unqualified lobbyists operating on murky finances. When it comes to public policy, never mind that women serving in the United States military rife with rape must resort to reproductive health care at Planned Parenthood off base when they are denied it by law on base. That's some thank-you-for-your-service-honey (http://www.demconvention.com/speech/cecile-richards; http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/05/24/senate-armed-services-committee-votes-to-end-military-ban-on-insurance-coverage-a; http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2011/05/26/military-women-deserve-firstclass-treatment-secondclass-status).
I hope and pray that American women never fall prey to the kind of state-sponsored sanctimony that with utter disregard for her defenseless life and for no defensible reason put Savita Halappanavar into a coma and then an early grave (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/02/medics-treating-savita-halappanavar; http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/did-irish-catholic-law-or-malpractice-kill-savita-halappanavar). Nevertheless, I fear that exactly that will happen in Ohio at the hands of the 130th General Assembly and the Kasich administration. For all their dissembling about alternative vendors for Title X services, those spearheading the move to defund Planned Parenthood in the Ohio Senate know full well that they are putting other women at risk to receive substandard medical care (http://msmagazine.com/blog/2011/05/09/treatment-denied/). That they are deadset to impose harebrained sectarian doctrines that violate the the truly ethical precept that the patient's needs come first is the price they're willing to let defenseless poor patients pay (unless, of course, those patients FINALLY get a clue politically and show up at the polls to vote next election day!) If sabotaging access to competent care at the hands of qualified physicians and nurses means subjecting patients to indefensible risk, oh well, those women shouldn't have been struggling in the worst economy since the Great Depression and needing charity health care in the first place. The social services policy expression of this mentality is that it's not the 130th General Assembly's problem if thousands of minors are living on the streets of Columbus (http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/06/05/star-house-funding-still-kept-out-of-state-budget.html). How else do you explain an Ohio General Assembly that kowtows to a career narcissist dangling her sentiments from a rented crop duster buzzing the Ohio statehouse on one hand and turns its back on its own youth on the other hand?
Does ANY member of the 130th General Assembly have a license to give any woman even a lousy manicure or a haircut? Not one member of the 130th General Assembly has a license to practice medicine, yet too many have no compunction about committing medical malpractice by proxy as long as some defenseless woman, her family, and their caregivers suffer the consequences. Maybe the 130th General Assembly should defer to the judgment of QUALIFIED physicians, especially those that have kept up to date with developments in their field (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/us/politics/rape-assertions-are-dismissed-by-health-experts.html; http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/get-involved/advisory-boards-and-initiatives/republicans-choice/goldwater-award/). Unfortunately, too many members of the 130th General Assembly behave as if they wouldn't know the difference between a tongue depressor and a shoehorn if they fell over them, but, dang, those boys sure think they know enough to tell women and their doctors what to do in the examination room and the operating theater (http://www.acog.org/About_ACOG/News_Room/News_Releases/2013/Ob-Gyns_Issue_Policy_Opposing_Legislative_Interference; http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsb1209858).
Based on the job performance of the 130th General Assembly and the Kasich administration to date, it's easy to write off poor and underemployed women when the politicians' own cushy jobs with health insurance benefits are safe in a gerrymandered state. Then they can let Ohio's illustrious Lieutenant Governor and Director of Insurance tell all the lies and cavort for all the fundraisers of the party faithful she likes (http://www.politifact.com/ohio/statements/2011/sep/19/mary-taylor/lt-gov-mary-taylor-says-obamacare-would-require-pu/). The truth be told (for once), it ain't like they ever really wanted Ms. Taylor to get a handle on Medicaid expansion to care for all those babies born to Ohio women with no education and no jobs (That would be too much like right, not right wing: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/06/12/group-state-must-act-fast-on-medicaid.html; http://wosu.org/2012/news/2013/06/12/senate-chief-medicaid-reform-not-part-of-budget/) Obviously, the Republican Party in Ohio today could never attract, much less support, a candidate the caliber of Dr. Cox in Oklahoma (http://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/get-involved/advisory-boards-and-initiatives/republicans-choice/goldwater-award/). But then, the Ohio State Senate and the Kasich administration have far more lucrative fish to fry in this budget (http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/06/05/senate-eases-campaign-giving-in-budget-bill-changes.html; http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/06/05/bill-signed-to-close-jobsohios-books.html).
Planned Parenthood has worked tirelessly for almost a century to get education, information, and contraceptives to women in the first place so that they would NOT have to resort to abortion in the second place. None other than that archprogressive Richard M. Nixon (who once referred to himself as an empiricist) signed Title X into law. Since then Planned Parenthood has consistently qualified for Title X funding not because they are politically connected and rigging the grant approval process, but because Planned Parenthood has delivered patients the best services for the lowest cost to taxpayers as determined in a nonpartisan review process required by federal law (http://wosu.org/2012/allsides/distribution-of-federal-family-planning-grants-in-ohio/).
Some argue that they do not want their tax dollars disbursed to organizations whose practices conflict with their religious doctrines. Well, child sex abuse and international money laundering repulse me, yet I see no move in the Ohio General Assembly to defund organizations operating in Ohio that are affiliated with notorious chronic violators. You have no idea what I'm talking about? That's not surprising given the caliber and depth of international news reporting in Central Ohio (Please DO READ:
http://theweek.com/article/index/244595/is-the-vatican-bank-finally-fighting-money-laundering-for-real;
http://business.financialpost.com/2013/05/31/vatican-bank/;
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/world/europe/power-struggle-on-reforming-vatican-bank.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0;
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/vatican-bank-failed-to-act-on-money-laundering-7957000.html; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2112159/Vatican-classed-likely-involved-money-laundering-Yemen-Algeria-North-Korea.html).
N.B.: Planned Parenthood NEVER has used Title X funds for abortion services and ALWAYS has accounted for every penny they spend by law. Please, somebody, do open the books of Ohio Right to Life! Who has been funding them, and how and to whom exactly have they disbursed their funds these many years? Oh, forgive me, I'm comparing apples with oranges. Ohio Right to Life provides no bonafide medical, educational, or social services that I'm aware of. Getting the real work done is Planned Parenthood's job.
Thank you, again, Ohio State Senators Tavares and Turner.
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