There are numerous reasons North Carolina residents should be angry this morning. If you are a teacher, a parent of a child in public school, a college student, a state employee, a woman, uninsured, lower-income, a person with mental illness, an infant, or a health worker, yesterday's late-night veto override of the state budget affects you.
Five Democrats joined the Republican majority in the override. I could go on and on about all the ways that this budget is, pardon my language, royally fucked, but I need to focus primarily on the defunding of Planned Parenthood.
Despite the fact that 57% of NC voters support state funding for Planned Parenthood, the GOP has used its majority, once again, to enact an ideology. With this budget, the GOP is waging class warfare against the most underserved communities, not just in its defunding of low-cost health clinics, but in its major cuts to education and human services as well. Don't even get me started on what this means for state employees (predominately lower-income people of color).
But I digress. This entry is about Planned Parenthood.
Last night's vote basically removes Planned Parenthood's ability to be a Title X provider. They are now no longer eligible to receive grants from the Women's Health Services Fund or the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiatives program.
I have been a regular client of my local Planned Parenthood clinic for four years. I have received annual pap smears, regular physical exams, low-cost birth control, and a very inexpensive breast exam that one time I found a strange lump. Not one of these visits ever put me in the poor house even though my health insurance doesn't cover me unless I get hit by a bus. Hell, they even did a strep throat test for me this one time I was on call for a birth and thought I was getting sick.
I have friends who have received all that and more from Planned Parenthood clinics. They've gotten STD testing and treatment. They've had cervical cancer screenings. They've gotten pregnancy tests and options counseling. They've had abortions. They've received referrals for low-cost prenatal care.
If this is what our General Assembly really thinks the state wants, they have another thing coming. There are too many of us who have received quality health care that they can afford, in part due to the state's funding of Planned Parenthood through the health block grants that they are now ineligible to receive. We will see the results of this, and fast. Sweeping cuts to education, massive lay-offs in the government sector, rampant attacks on the environment, cuts to WIC programs, and of course the lack of low-cost health care outside of county-run health departments resinate with far too many NC residents for us to just sit back and take it.
The question now is, what are we going to do about it?
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