With their usual foresight, GOP Texas lawmakers cut Planned Parenthood funding from the state's women's "health" program in 2013. And lo and behold, an independent study by the New England Journal of Medicine has found that resulted in fewer women using long-acting birth control. Guess what else happened: births among low-income families also rose (though the study didn't make an explicit correlation between lower birth control use and higher birth rates).
Man, who coulda seen that coming? I mean, cutting funding for a provider that delivered services to about 60 percent of the state's low-income women of childbearing age doesn't necessarily mean fewer people can get those services.
A top Texas Republican lawmaker, state Sen. Jane Nelson, called the study misleading and said it didn't take into account all state programs for women. The state health commission said the number of clinics providing women's health services had doubled.
Actually, Ms. Nelson, you're wrong. The research simply measured how many women were accessing those services, not where they were accessing them from. So it did take all that great Texas programming into consideration. You guys just completely and utterly failed low-income women.
Researchers, though, said Texas hasn't filled the void left by Planned Parenthood.
"Whatever good efforts are being made, they weren't enough to offset the impact of suddenly removing Planned Parenthood," said Joseph Potter, a researcher at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the study authors.