RESOURCES ON THE REALITY OF TITLE X
Title X is a financial plan devised by the government that is supposed to be dedicated to family planning. It was brought into action by President Nixon in 1970 as a means to offer services including contraception and doctor's visits to people of low-income families who otherwise would not be able to afford or receive care. Since its establishment, Title X has helped to create family planning clinics nationwide, allowing numerous women a chance to plan a healthy pregnancy or to receive other quality healthcare services at a reasonable cost. In many situations, Title X is the only option people have to receive healthcare at all. With such a prosperous beginning and a promising motive, why is such a program under attack and getting dangerously close to losing its funding?
Religious groups are the main enemy of the widespread and much-needed Title X program. Though many women and families depend on its healthcare options, religious and political groups are allowing narrow-minded, biblically-fueled logic to deny women any access to care that would provide them resources for an abortion after an unplanned or unsafe pregnancy, and even attempting to cut women off from birth control methods completely. They give the false impression that they are truly concerned for these women, when in reality, their goal is to promote a selfish agenda of falsely achieved chastity and female oppression. Not only are these views damaging to natural views of sexuality, but they are painfully heartless preventative measures that do not save a child's life, but rather put the lives of countless women and their families in dangerous, unhealthy situations.
DANGER OF ABOLISHING TITLE X WHILE ALSO WITHHOLDING PROPER SEX EDUCATION
The deliberate attempts by the religious right and its political counterparts to thwart all funding of Title X is a dangerous enough situation on its own. Add in the fact that these same groups also make it a point to deny comprehensive, explicit sex education to young minds, and you have a recipe for a deadly epidemic. Instead of embracing the simple fact that human beings are born with hormones and teaching children and teens how to control them and how to take precaution in an intimate situation, the Church would rather make young people ashamed of their sexuality and withhold vital information from them that could save their lives. So, not only do these monstrous people seek to completely destroy any hope of health care for low-income women, but they also fight to deny people access to detailed information about sex and contraception. If these people are so terribly concerned about preventing abortions, wouldn't it make sense to teach people how to avoid an unwanted pregnancy?
According to them, the answer isn't comprehensive sex education - - the answer is abstinence. While there is nothing wrong with choosing to be abstinent, it is wildly dangerous to give people the impression that it is the only safe route. To date, abstinence-only sex education has probably caused just as much damage as unprotected sex. Let's try to make sense of this: in the perfect, right-wing Christian society, a young woman is never taught about how to use condoms, where to receive a prescription for birth control, or anything about sexually-transmitted diseases. In that same society, the young woman becomes pregnant due to lack of sexual knowledge or healthy prevention methods and is now denied the right to an abortion that could have been prevented from the start, thanks to the revocation of Title X. Way to go, religious logic. Way to go.
CUTTING FUNDING TO TITLE X: A MURDEROUS THREAT TO WOMEN
Religious and political groups are working feverishly to make sure that all federal funding to Title X is axed. It is not an attempt to save money or do anybody a favor, but rather a deadly plan to make certain that women have no access to birth control or abortions. If all funding was withdrawn from the program, millions of women would lose their only means of healthcare. To date, Title X has already lost $15 million in funding (Planned Parenthood). Not to mention that the prevention efforts by the CDC to help stop the spreading of HIV have lost a hefty $39.9 million. According to the Guttmacher Institute, one-fourth of low-income women in the United States receive care or treatment from a Title X-funded facility. With the recent sequesters, most of these women will end up helpless in terms of access to reproductive health needs (The Reach and Impact of Title X).
The religious undertones that push politicians to approve these cuts to Title X are neither safe, nor cost effective. Aside from cutting women off from family planning resources, the cuts will also lead to many women and children losing any access to health services including cancer screenings, STI prevention, and children's medicine (March of Dimes). Fighting to preserve wacky religious ideals about women's rights and their bodies will leave these religious figures with blood on their hands. The number of women who will soon lose the ability to visit the doctor for a standard mammogram or cervical cancer screening should be enough to startle these fools, but they are relentless. The children of women who rely on Title X will have a lot to lose, as well. The recent sequesters have also cut the budget that provides education, health, and nutrition services to children of low-income families (Think Progress). Is defending a set of warped family values really important enough to leave millions of women and their families to die from lack of health resources?
This insane crusade to dictate what is and what is not acceptable according to the Christian faith is killing millions of people in the process. They claim to have people's best interests in mind, and supposedly are working to keep the "integrity" of the family intact. However, placing women and their health on the backburner is never going to achieve that goal. Those who take every sentence of the Bible painfully literally will argue what they believe is the purpose of a woman, which they often say is to bear a child or to simply be subservient to a man. While nobody has a predetermined purpose, a religious book or group of people does not have the right to assume they know what is best for womanhood, children, and the status of the American family.
FACTS ON TITLE X
State Facts About Title X and Family Planning
Title X Family Planning Clinics
Title X: Budget & Appropriations
ARTICLES ON CURRENT STATUS AND THREATS TO TITLE X
Rejection of Title X Funds Hurt Poor
Cutting Title X Family Planning in the Sequester Hurts Women's Reproductive Health
What Exactly is Title X Funding?
About Rick Santorum's Flip-Flop on Title X Issue