(Oooohhh, I think it’s my first cross post since the new blog got rolled out. I’m all a-flutter!)
Longtime readers of [my] blog know that I have a peculiar dislike of our neighbors to the north. I was born there, so I’m allowed. š There has been some progress there, like the passage of same-sex marriage in 2009 (though that’s in danger of repeal next year). But by and large, I wasn’t impressed with their education system…I was angered by the near-loss of all music and art programs in Manchester schools in my last year of high school…and I was furious when the NH legislature yanked funding out from under UNH, my alma mater, mid-year (ie after the budget had been passed and UNH started their fiscal year) which caused no end of chaos for departments, professors, and administrators, and the year after I left, their tight budgeting caused the loss of some of the best teachers in the departments of my major and minor. That was all between the years 1994 and 1999. You know. The boom years of our economy. *rolls eyes*
So the fact that New Hampshire (which I like to call “New Hamster” because the state is about as dumb as one) has managed to one-up the stupidity of its past actions, believe you me, is quite a feat. But it has. By defunding Planned Parenthood of Northern New England (PPNE) (bold mine).
Planned Parenthood has stopped providing birth control pills and other contraception in New Hampshire after the stateās executive council rejected up to $1.8 million in funding for the groupā because it also provides privately-funded abortions. After losing its contract ā which paid for education, distributing contraception, and the testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections ā the centers have āturned away 20 to 30 patients a day who have arrived to refill their birth control prescriptions.
[…]
Some women have told the center that the will likely āstop taking birth control because they cannot afford the higher prices charged by pharmaciesā and an estimated 70 percent donāt have insurance to cover the prescriptions.
Did I emphasize enough that the public funding is not for abortions in any way, shape or form? PPNE does privately funded abortions. The public money helps them deliver other services, particularly for the underprivileged.
Let me tell you a little story as to why this makes me even madder than seeing my favorite Brit Lit professor laid off.
I’ve mentioned before that there was a period of time my husband and I were uninsured. Due to the great, fabulous “employer-based” system we have, we were employed by people who don’t give insurance – ie contracting and temp agencies. Yay for the American work environment.
Those same temp jobs (at the time) didn’t pay well (before we started working in MA, where the real jobs are). So we didn’t go to any GPs, desperately afraid of finding preexisting conditions, and not really in the fiscal situation to afford out-of-pocket expenses, anyway.
Except for Planned Parenthood. You see, I qualified for their sliding fee scale. In doing so, I could get heavily discounted birth control and GYN exams. In the case of birth control, it was a godsend.
Ever since those lowly days as a temp administrative assistant in NH, I have felt a profound gratitude to Planned Parenthood, so much so that I still use their services, as a full-paying insured client, so I can at least support them in that way. I have to hike to Boston to do it but it’s worth it to me. I do not know what we would have done without those services, and the fee help, during the first years of our life together. I would have been one of those women who would have lost access to birth control, which could have been devastating.
This is why New Hampshire is one of the stupidest, most backwards, idiotic states in the union. I will never live there again, you couldn’t pay me to educate my kids (if I had any) there, and if you are a woman, they’ll screw with your access to safe, legal birth control.
And just to kick women when they’re down:
āI am opposed to abortion,ā said Raymond Wieczorek, a council member who voted against the contract. āI am opposed to providing condoms to someone. If you want to have a party, have a party, but donāt ask me to pay for it.ā
Go fuck yourself, Raymond Wieczorek. No really, go and have an unwanted pregnancy because you couldn’t afford birth control, you whiny tiny-minded privileged old white asshole. Go back to the eighteenth century when you were born and get a leech treatment for your warts. The rest of us want progress, not old moldy assholes dragging us back to the Dark Ages.
New Hamster or Florida, both compete for Redneck Stupid State of the Year. By the by, Wieczorek is the former mayor of Manchester. Guess which years he was in charge??
Many of you know me as a more pro-life abortion skeptic on this forum, yet even I think this is absurd. The Hyde Amendment and statewide amendments prevent government funding of abortion, which I support although some may disagree with me on that. But funding contraception, sex education, and basic OBGYN care, not to mention the HPV vaccine, we not only improve the health of women,a goal that should be universal across party lines we significantly reduce abortions. Make no mistake this fight is not about abortion, we can fight about that on another forum, but we should all be in agreement in favor of womens health. This is an inane policy, and obviously won’t significantly balance the budget either. NH is a great case study of why a libertarian state is a fun place to visit and shop in but an awful place to live and raise a family. Massachusetts has great healthcare, great schools, great jobs, and lower property taxes. The nation should emulate Massachusetts, not our misguided neighbor to the north.
This could have any number of outcomes. I think it could result in a whole lot of babies and families forming and people getting to work to support them, and guys leaving the free-stater life to become fathers. It’s almost biblical.
And a naive one at that.
A man who doesn’t know the “families” that follow a young girl’s unplanned and unwanted baby — the divorces, the abuse, the poverty. A man who writes of “getting to work to support them” who apparently doesn’t know any young men forced into lives of poverty by paying child support for babies they don’t want and aren’t prepared for.
The New Hampshire move to block access to contraceptives is typical of the tyranny that “small government” right-wingers always impose when given a chance. Another good reason to stay far away from New Hampshire.
We disagree on the broader issue, and I hate the idea that men have no say in the abortion debate since potential fathers, brothers, and sons are affected. I also abhor the idea that they should have the ultimate, the final, or even an equal say, but the idea that their voices don’t matter is also just as extreme in my view and indifferent to the complexities of the situation. That said you hit the nail on the head here. As a paralegal a good part of my job is chasing down deadbeat dads for their child support, and in many cases its easy to see why they cant pay-they cant afford to. In this economic climate, and especially with urban poverty (less of a factor in lily white NH but jobs are scarce all over) it really does hurt to see generations decimated by out of wedlock pregnancies and teen pregnancies. Pregnancies that are easily preventable through a combination on good programs, which have to include sex ed and family planning. Abstinence before marriage or at least before college should be taught, but they must be paired with comprehensive sex ed or they will just result in more tragedies. And this Catholic believes the Church and society as a whole should embrace contraception as the preferential option for the poor and the safest and earliest alternative to abortion.
“having a say” is meaningless if you believe a woman has the right to choose, for surely the woman in question should have the final “say.”
I’ve often heard pro-abstenance-only education make statements like “If you go away for the weekend, you don’t leave your kids the keys to the car.” That always seemed strange to me. It seems to me that if you go away for the weekend, and your kids do take the car, the most important thing is that they wear their seat belts. It’s true, they shouldn’t have taken the car and they were irresponsible… but if they do get into a crash, you’ll sure wish you had instructed them on proper seat belt use.
Hit the nail on the head with your analogy. Abstinence adovocates are right, and social libertarians wrong IMO, to proclaim that good parenting and a schooling should yield the most ideal outcome. But they have to shut their brains off to think that human being, even when taught properly, especially teenaged human beings, are always going to do the ideal thing. Seat belts are needed and any plan without them is bound to fail. And again if you read my point about men and abortion I am arguing that in the scheme of things their say should not be discounted or made irrelevant or dismissed since it takes two to make a baby. But men should never be allowed to coerce women into making any decision particularly this one, and most importantly one way or the other.