The Shutdown Gets Shut Down

Last week, an epic struggle over abortion rights was waged on the Senate floor, the most dramatic such debate in at least two weeks and the likes of which will only be seen five or six more times before the end of 2011.  With just an hour to go until complete and total anarchy (in the way of closed post offices and a parking free-for-all), the government shutdown was halted when the Republicans conceded defeat in their Game of Chicken and generously agreed to devote 0.008% of the federal budget to Planned Parenthood.

http://thefeministgriote.com/?p=775

Here are just a few things that we learned in the week leading up to the Shutdown:

• "Big Abortion" is something we should be worried about.
• Abortion constitutes over 90% of Planned Parenthood's services.
• You can get a mammogram and a Pap Smear at Walgreens.

http://www.newshounds.us/2011/04/12/brian_kilmeades_misogynistic_mocking_of_planned_parenthood.php

Now, while it is evidently permissible in political discourse to use absolutely any fabricated fact or preferably a bullshitted statistic to support your argument, it still remains the case that abortions constitute only 3% of Planned Parenthood's services, and Section 1008 of Title X already prohibits these abortions from being funded by federal dollars.  Yet, in just the same way that all women entering a PP facility for any reason are harassed indiscriminately, so too were the 97% of PP services that are not abortion-related to be defunded in the right's war of attrition on abortion and women's health.

This all leaves me utterly baffled as to what's truly at the root of the debate, because its clearly not the deficit.  I do, however, have my pet theories.  First:  America's religious, corn-fed middle and lower classes care more about fetuses than about women, to put it simply.  Babies have the fortune of being cute and innocent, whereas women have had sufficient time to fuck up in some aspect of life.  I can't tell you how many times I've come across this viewpoint just in perusing other Blogspot blogs and Facebook pages:  babies are sweet, innocent, and "gifts from God," and women who are not interested in producing more of them are whores, murderers, or both.

Second: America is viscerally afraid of and opposed to sex.  We are dedicated to denying that sexuality is a natural and universal aspect of life, whether we are married or single, straight or gay, trying to procreate or not.  Women's health services pertain to STDs, pregnancy, and the general state of having genitals - all of which are matters relate to sex.  Thus, Planned Parenthood falls into the category of "things your parents get awkwardly silent about and hope you don't notice," along with condom commercials and softcore porn mags.  So why devote funds to preventing the byproducts of sex - STDs, pregnancy, and cervical cancer - when these things only happen to bad people who are just getting what they deserve?

Luckily, the joke is on detractors of women's health, because donations to Planned Parenthood have increased 500% since the funding debate first began.  Evidently, there are people other than myself who feel that saving money by not providing condoms to low-income populations may not be the best cost-reduction approach in the long run.