Anti-Abortionists' "Immaculate Deception"

I. Anti-Abortionists' "Immaculate Deception"
"Title X is the only federal program devoted to  provide family planning across the country. It serves 4 million low-income people nationwide annually on a budget of $286 million, and is estimated to prevent 800,000 unintended pregnancies every year." "Planned Parenthood was squeezed out, as the White House has been pushing to redirect Title X and other federal funds to anti-abortion organizations." [1]

"Abstinence-only activists now control key posts at HHS, and are driving policies that force their     views about contraception onto the vast majority of Americans. CPCs have a long, well-documented record of using high-pressure tactics on unsuspecting women, and peddling misinformation, like the myths that abortion causes breast cancer, infertility and suicide. In 2015, a Massachusetts-based firm set up virtual 'fences' around family planning clinics to target abortion-minded women, according to the Massachusetts attorney general."

"As a licensed community clinic, the California-based organization named Obria is required to provide the state with  annual data about services and clients. In 2018, the Obria clinic in Long Beach reported seeing only 628 patients ,fewer than two per day. Planned Parenthood's Long Beach clinic saw twice as many patients than all of Obria's licensed California's clinics combined, which reported serving fewer than 4,000 patients in 2018."

Women with choices perhaps are't all that interested in what Obria is selling. That's no surprise; according to the federal Office of Population Affairs,just 1 in 200 patients in the Title X program use natural family as their primary form of contraception. The issue is whether it's legal for Obria to take   federal money for family planning and STI prevention, but refuses to provide contraception and condoms or referrals for them. "The conservative Christians in Trump's administration would like to push low-income women to use places like Obria for family planning or reproductive health care, and ultimately, that's no choice at all.

II. Codifying Roe Into Statute
"The vast majority of American adults, 77 percent -- according to a 2019 NPR Newshour/Marist poll -- support legal access to abortion,an increase from last year." "The crisis requires a health care plan that includes coverage of comprehensive reproductive care, like the one purposed by Bernie Sanders." "The next president must push to codify Roe into statute; repeal the Hyde Amendment permanently: remove the global gag rule, which bars giving federal funds to any foreign health organization that provides abortions or even discusses it as an option; and reinstate Title X finding for Planned Parenthood and other full-service reproductive health care providers." "This president and the anti-choice movement that put him over the top in 2016 see our personal agency as something to gleefully extinguish." [2]

III. Job Loss and Information Chaos
"Over the past three decades,newspapers workers have lost their jobs faster than coal miners, and now digital properties are shedding staff too." [3]

"Less real news, more viral context. This is what experts call 'information chaos'. Russia has been capitalizing on it whit its 'firehose of falsehood' propaganda, confusing people with outlandish claims until they despair of figuring out what's real."

ADDENDUMS:
*"As corporate meat-packers have expanded, small ranchers have been getting squeezed. In 1970, they earned about 70 cents for every dollar that consumers spent on beef; today, small ranchers get less than 40 cents." "The Trump administration has killed Obama-era rules that leveled the playing field, and, as one consequence,farm bankruptcies are surging." [4]

*"Polls have found that gun violence was the number one issue for Virginia voters,who showed bipartisan support for passing universal background checks and removing guns from people deemed to present a safety risk." [5]

Footnotes:
[1] Stephanie Mencimer, "Immaculate Deception," Mother Jones, January/February 2020.

[2] Ilyse Hogue, "How to Undo Trump's Damage," The Nation, December 16/23, 2019.

[3] Monika Bauerlein, "Bullies United," Mother Jones, January/February 2020.

[4] Tom Philpott, "The Last Roundup," Mother Jones, January/February 2020.

[5] Matt Cohen, "Ballots vs. Bullets," Mother Jones, January/February 2020.