No Sex Ed + No Women's Healthcare= ...

Love this smart way to tuck a condom
in your bag!

I hail from one of the great states that requires abstinence-only sex education in public schools. A state that not only does this, but outsources the abstinence-only programs to contractors whose programs have been found provide inaccurate information. In 2004 the Texas State Board of Education adopted textbooks that lacked any accurate information about contraception or preventing STDs. This is slowly starting to change, but the vast majority of students in Texas receive an abstinence-only until marriage message about sex education.

A couple of weeks ago Salon reported on the results of the substantial cuts Texas made to the Women's Health Program, which provides health services to low-income women, and they aren't good. In 2011 the Texas legislature cut $73 million from family planning programs and women's health services. When it did that, the state forfeited the $30 million in federal Medicaid funds that also funded those programs. At the time there was a lot of rhetoric about the need to defund abortion providers (i.e. Planned Parenthood), and sadly "abortion provider" was found to be equivalent to "women's health provider" since Planned Parenthood was the primary provider of services in the Women's Health Program. Nota bene: most Planned Parenthoods in Texas do not offer abortions, and none of the ones providing the Women's Health Program services did.

Two years later, what are the results? From the Salon piece, italics mine:

The Health and Human Services Commission has projected that, because of funding cuts, unplanned pregnancies in Texas will add $273 million in costs to taxpayers. The Texas Legislative Budget Board also estimated that the cuts would lead to 284,000 women losing family planning services, resulting in 20,000 additional unplanned births at a cost upward of $200 million.

If I understand everything, the numbers above are projections for 2014-2015. It now appears that the legislature is poised to put $100 million back into the budget to fund the Women's Health Program, but it's fairly clear that Planned Parenthood will not be brought back into the fold. Mother Jones has a nice visual piece on this issue from which I stole the following graph:

Others have explained this issue better than I'm able to, for example, The New York Times. As a woman, as a taxpayer, and as a human being I find the situation in Texas frustrating and demoralizing. I am very glad that there are steps underway to repair some of the damage. But the anti-education, anti-woman, and anti-choice decisions that the legislature continues to adopt put the health of millions at risk.

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear an overview of the programs another country has in place for sex education, access to contraception for minors, and access to healthcare services and sexual health services for poorer people. I sat there open-mouthed, occasionally gasping like a fish out of water. After decades of uphill battles to provide greater access to information and healthcare services, it sometimes feels like, in Texas at least, all we're doing is backsliding.

For all my indignation I feel pretty powerless. I can write to or call my representative. Fortunately, he thinks like I do. And sadly, we're both in the minority.