Regressive gender politics are resurgent in 2017, as demonstrated by a Republican bill that would be devastating to womens health
A decade or two ago, the idea that 13 humen would be plotting the fate of American womens healthcare behind closed doors, that they would delight in defunding the status of women health organization Planned Parenthood and obstructing healthcare access of billions of American girls, would have felt like the politics of a bygone era.
Midway through 2017, it seems more like deja vu.
As Republicans prepare for their delayed vote on their updated measure to repeal and supplant the Affordable Care Act, womens groups and senators have vocally made out against male predominance of the healthcare debate exemplified by the GOPs 13-man working group that crafted the Senate bill.
The Democratic senator Kamala Harris told the Guardian the bill is awful for women, while her New York colleague Kirsten Gillibrand has described it as a cruel joke and a blatantly partisan attack on women health.
But for many, its more than the substance of the bill that riles. Specifically, it feels like a return to a kind of regressive gender politics they hoped had passed in America: a politics in which humen make the decisions about what happens to womens bodies.
Its outrageous that the future of healthcare for millions of women lies in the hands of 13 humen, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, mentioned. Its clear they dont care about our opinion or our lives because if they had asked us what we imagine, marriage all be in a very different posture right now.
The Senate healthcare bill would increase the number of uninsured people in the US by 22 million, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, and is opposed by the American Medical Association on the grounds that it violates the Hippocratic oath.
It would also be particularly devastating to womens health, in a number of ways. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senates health committee, called it nothing less than an attack on women health and rights.
Harris said: It blocks millions of women on Medicaid from getting care at Planned Parenthood. It permits states to stop requiring insurance companies to cover essential health benefits like maternity care and family planning. Women in this country will not be silenced on this issue. We will only get louder.
Under the Republican bill, females could pay as much as $1,000 more per month for maternity care, Murray told reporters in a conference call on Friday, and millions would lose access to even the most basic preventive care services at Planned Parenthood.
As Dana Singiser of Planned Parenthood put it on the bellow: If we listed all the cruel things this bill would do wed be here all day.
Often the men who tout defunding Planned Parenthood seem to have no idea what the organization actually does.
Frankly, I am sick of coming down to the Senate floor to explain to Republicans what Planned Parenthood does, Elizabeth Warren said in a recent statement posted to her Facebook page. I am sick of explaining that it offer millions of women with birth control, cancer screenings, and STI exams every year. I am sick of pointing out again and again that federal dollars do not money abortion services at Planned Parenthood or anywhere else.
Because of the Hyde amendment, federal fund does not actually go toward abortion services, but to the other basic healthcare services Warren outlined, including life-saving cancer screenings and treatments.
It isnt the first time in recent years she has had to explain to the men in charge of status of women healthcare how the most significant US provider of reproductive healthcare operates. When the GOP mounted another great efforts to defund Planned Parenthood back in August 2015, she made a similar speech.
Do you have any idea what year it is? Warren asked at the time. Did you fall down, reach your chief, and think you woke up in the 1950 s or the 1890 s? Should we call for a medical doctor? Because I simply cannot believe that in the year 2015, the Us senate would be investing its period trying to defund womens healthcare centers.
Perhaps she shouldnt ought to have that amazed. For years, Republican have worked to strip away womens rights to make choices about their own bodies and more often than not, the efforts have been led by humen. When Donald Trump signed the global gag rule, pulling US funding from any world organizations that so much as mention the word abortion, he did it flanked exclusively by white humankinds in suits. A photo of President George W Bush signing a ban on a rare abortion procedure uncovers yet another group of grinning, self-congratulatory men.
As Jill Filipovic, writing in the New York Times, has noted, in a manner that is, humen controlling women bodies is an election promise delivered. At some degree, we have to ask: Is that is something that a pattern of faults? she writes. Perhaps these arent tone-deaf mistakes at all, but intentional messages to rightwing supporters.
Warren seems to agree, at the least with the idea that the bill is an issue of political messaging.
Women come to the floor, we explain, we cite facts. But Republican would rather base healthcare policy on politics than on facts, she said recently, after the House speaker, Paul Ryan, called the bill pro-life. Calling something pro-life wont keep women from dying in back alley abortions; it wont help women pay for the cancer screenings that could save their lives; it wont used to help take care of their families, have safe sex or render their medical bills.
Murray was even more sweeping in her appraisal. The instant were in right now is truly a pivotal one for women and womens rights, she told reporters Friday, adding that for every woman and everyone who cares about their access to healthcare , now is the time to fight back.
Those 13 boys cutting backroom deals about your healthcare access clearly didnt want to hear from you, so make sure they do now, she said.
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