KY Repug Senate Votes to Kill Poor Women and Their Children

Because that's what cutting Planned Parenthood funding does.

From the LRC:

The state Senate has passed legislation intended to curb the flow of non-Medicaid, state-administered tax dollars to Planned Parenthood clinics in Kentucky.

Dubbed the “Defunding Planned Parenthood Legislation,” Senate Bill 7 passed by a 33-5 vote on Tuesday. The bill now goes to the House of Representatives for consideration. 

 It's the "Killing Poor Women and Their Children Legislation," and here's why:

What terrorists like Dear and Republicans in Congress want is basically the same: to shut down Planned Parenthood and deny women access to abortions. If they got their wish, it would serve only to make poor women poorer and increase the number of unintended pregnancies.

Indeed, unintended pregnancies are already concentrated among low-income women, an imbalance that has been increasing. The rate of such pregnancies among women with incomes below the poverty line jumped 56 percent from 1994 to 2008, while for higher-income women it actually fell by 24 percent. In 2008, the unintended-pregnancy rate for poor women was more than five times that of the most well-off. All of this means that poor women have higher rates of unplanned births as well as abortions—six times and five times higher, respectively—than women at the other end of the income scale. Poor women also have fewer places to turn for affordable contraception and reproductive care—except for organizations like Planned Parenthood.

Taking away the option to seek an abortion would not just infringe on the constitutional rights of poor women; it would almost certainly make them poorer. If Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that made abortion legal throughout the country, were overturned and states were allowed to implement their own bans, poorer nonwhite women would see their abortion rates decline more significantly, according to researchers. In part, this would be due to the simple problem of having to travel long distances just to reach a clinic.

Current research already tells us what happens to women who want an abortion but can’t get one. Women who seek to terminate a pregnancy but are turned away are three times more likely to fall below the poverty line over the following two years than women who successfully get an abortion. They are also more likely to end up unemployed and to rely on government benefits to get by. Women themselves already know this: Among the main reasons they cite for seeking the procedure is that they can’t afford to have a baby, and that doing so would interfere with their ability to work or gain an education.

Shutting down Planned Parenthood wouldn’t just affect access to abortion, of course. The group provides many other services to low-income women. Poor women are more likely to have sex without birth control—and access to affordable contraception would shrink further without the existence of Planned Parenthood. Among 491 counties with Planned Parenthood clinics, 103 have no other place where low-income patients can obtain affordable contraception.

Access to reproductive healthcare is certainly about women’s right to bodily autonomy. But doing away with that right also comes with devastating economic consequences, especially for those already at the bottom. Eliminating Planned Parenthood would create a vicious cycle of impoverishment and unwanted pregnancies for the most vulnerable women among us.

Just one year ago, Kentuckians could count on our Democratic-majority house of representatives to shit-can bills like this before our Democratic governor even got a chance to veto them.  No more.

The Kentucky House now has a bare one-vote majority and has already surrendered to the conservatard freakazoid repugs by passing anti-abortion legislation that for decades it has refused to even let out of committee.

From the LRC:

The first bill the 2016 General Assembly delivered to the governor would require a an in-person or real-time video conference between a woman seeking an abortion and a health care provider at least 24 hours before the procedure.

The state Senate gave final passage of “informed consent” legislation, also known as Senate Bill 4, as amended by the House of Representatives by a 33-5 vote today. On Thursday, the House amended SB 4 to include the video conference option, known as “telehealth.” Backers of the House amendment said the telehealth provision would eliminate the burden of women having to make an extra trip to a clinic that provides abortions.

We. Are. So. Fucked.