But just a few hours later, many of the very same members of Congress voted to end all funding for family planning health services under Title X of the Public Health Act, even services provided by clinics that don't perform abortions.
Embedded in the continuing budget resolution passed by Congress about 4 a.m. on Saturday was a provision that zeroes out all money -$317 million - to implement Title X, the Nixon-era program that provides birth control and other services to about 5 million women and men each year.
Here in Pennsylvania, Title X programs provided contraceptives to 254,000 people last year, and almost 264,000 received tests for sexually transmitted diseases like chlamydia and gonorrhea. In addition, about 76,000 screening tests for cervical cancer and almost 26,000 tests for HIV were performed.
If the funding for these programs were to disappear, it's a cinch that the 301,000 Pennsylvanians who use them annually wouldn't. And neither would their cancers or STDs.
Depending on how you count, there are three, four, even nine bills in Congress that take direct aim at reproductive rights. Among them: a bill that would deny tax credits for businesses that offer health-insurance plans covering abortion; another that would allow a "conscience exception" to a hospital to refuse an abortion to a woman even if her life were in danger; another that would outlaw abortion by interpreting the 14th Amendment as offering equal protection for the "preborn."
