Planned Parenthood Staff & Volunteers with Van Jones
You have to be in love with your job when it’s the middle of the day and you’re off to the Capitol for a rally. Of course, better that we were not in a situation where our basic human safety net, including Medicaid, Medicare and social security, were at such risk.
For the clients Planned Parenthood sees, Medicaid is an absolutely essential “benefit,” which helps pay for (but does not completely cover) basic health services such as Pap smears, cancer screenings and STI testing. As we saw in Indiana earlier this summer, cutting Medicaid simply means that more women are forced to go without care. For any fiscal conservatives, that should ring a warning bell. In addition to putting women’s health at risk—it actually ends up costing everyone more in the long term.
Many groups were at the rally today…and more can be found at rebuildthedream.com. For our part, we ended on a positive note: delivering the many signed petitions we have supporting birth control as a preventative service to the Department of Health and Human Services. The recent IOM recommendation was a boon for women’s health care: let’s ensure we keep moving forwards, and not backwards.
Update: More about the rally in this NPR story.
