National Health Law Program Says Proposed Rule Is Another Attack on Rights of Women to Access Birth Control, Cancer Screenings, and General Women’s Health Exams
Washington – The Trump administration continues its efforts to rollback health rights of women, planning to release a new rule designed to bar health care providers receiving Title X funding from providing women, mostly women trying to survive on low-incomes, accurate information, referrals, and access to vital health services, such as birth control, preventive and reproductive care, and abortion.
The Title X program has always provided medically accurate, unbiased, and confidential reproductive health care, including contraception, screening and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, and information about and referrals to abortion services for women seeking them. Current law severely limits federal funding for abortion. The Impact of any changes to Title X in this way will eliminate more than 40 percent of trusted providers from the program, creating reproductive health deserts throughout the country.
“The Trump-Pence administration has once again demonstrated it has little respect for women, and its disregard for women’s health and decision-making informs policy that is retrograde and pernicious,” National Health Law Program Director of Reproductive Health Susan Berke Fogel said. “From its inception, this administration has pushed initiative after initiative to undermine quality health care coverage for women enrolled in Medicaid, destroy the Affordable Care Act – also vital to millions of women, and create rules allowing employers to block women from accessing contraception. Now Trump-Pence wants to destroy Planned Parenthood health care centers, which are the largest provider of vital care to women who cannot afford quality health insurance or are working in jobs that only provide limited health care plans.”
National Health Law Program Staff Attorney Candace Gibson said the new policy will exacerbate the gaping inequalities in the health care system, further harming the women who already face the greatest barriers to quality care.
“Many women accessing health care through Title X are doing so because they are mired in jobs with low wages and no health benefits and have nowhere else to turn to get care, including students,” Gibson noted. “They are women of color who have been historically discriminated against in the health care system and may not have access to linguistically competent care. The Trump administration is backtracking on the progress this country had been making to ensure that women, regardless of their race or incomes, have access to the quality health care and accurate, medical information that privileged women have.”
Fogel added, “Trump is blatantly attacking basic rights of women, to rally his rabid anti-woman base. All women regardless of their race or income must have access to comprehensive health care. That is why health care and human rights activists must continue to fight for health care for all.”
Please contact Jeremy Leaming at [email protected] for more information and comment from Fogel or Gibson.
