Editor’s note: This commentary is by Meagan Gallagher, who is president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England.
[T]hank you Congressman Peter Welch for voting no on the worst women’s health legislation in a generation.
“Defunding” Planned Parenthood would deny 18,000 Vermonters access to cancer screenings, birth control, and STD testing and treatment. By voting no, Congressman Welch denounced the Trump administration’s and House Republican’s efforts to:
â Take away health coverage for 24 million people.
â “Defund” Planned Parenthood by blocking people with Medicaid from accessing preventive care at Planned Parenthood health centers — including birth control, cancer screenings, and STD testing and treatment.
â Eliminate protections restricting insurance companies from charging people with pre-existing conditions unaffordable rates. Under this bill, health insurance companies could once again charge people tens of thousands of dollars a month because they had cancer.
Planned Parenthood will continue to provide high quality health care, even as we continue the struggle for reproductive freedom for everyone.
â Undermine essential health benefits standards, including maternity coverage and prescription drugs, which disproportionately affect women.
â Gut the Medicaid program, which approximately one in four women of reproductive age rely on to access no-cost, critical reproductive health care such as birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings and maternity care.
â Reduce access to no-cost preventive services, including birth control.
â Impose a nationwide ban on private insurance coverage of abortion.
The American Health Care Act, including the provision to prohibit people with Medicaid from accessing preventive care at Planned Parenthood, has drawn widespread opposition from health care experts, including the American Public Health Association, the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, members of Congress from both parties, and a clear majority of American voters.
Vermonters have stood in solidarity against these baseless attacks on health care access by attending rallies – including the 15,000 that attended the Women’s March in Montpelier and the 392 people who participated in the Roe v. Wade Lobby Day — speaking candidly with state representatives about the desire to increase access through a universal health care system, and hosting 22 independent fundraisers to specifically support Planned Parenthood’s services. Planned Parenthood will continue to provide high quality health care, even as we continue the struggle for reproductive freedom for everyone.
