“I would defund [Planned Parenthood] because I’m pro-life, but millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood,” said Donald Trump during a GOP debate in February, 2016, in Houston.
Trump’s threats to defund Planned Parenthood are very confusing. He acknowledges that the health center helps “millions and millions of women,” and yet he degrades it as an “abortion factory.”
Threatening to defund Planned Parenthood is despicable because, according to NPR, abortions are only “three percent of the services” Planned Parenthood performs.
What a small fraction to cause such a fuss over and possibly block access to all the other benefits provided by the health center.
Pence’s anti-abortion agenda is just the start of his anti-women stance. Throughout his time as governor of Indiana, Pence has proven to be against women, both as citizens and in regards to their sexual health.
First, Pence tried to bring the United States back to the sexist philosophy of women’s role as mother in the home. In 1997, Pence wrote to The Indianapolis Star reporting that it is indeed impossible to “…have it all, career, kids and a two car garage,” claiming that research proves a child who is put into day care is “…less affectionate towards his mother.”
Likewise, in the piece for The Indianapolis Star, Pence suggests American society has accepted “…the big lie that ‘Mom doesn’t matter.’” This implies that being an independent woman who is both a mother and job holder completely excludes her from the child’s life thus no longer mattering as a parent.
The wife, the mother, the woman must either be an employee or a mother, not both, according to Pence.
Pence goes on to claim that this lack of family, which in context of his writing implies the full-time presence of a woman in the home, leads to “another generation of adults with good language skills and cognitive skills but stunted emotional growth.”
From this source, we can unveil Pence’s out-dated views of women’s roles in the home and family; with misogynistic Pence in office, American women can look forward to being placed back into the 1950s, restricted from individual freedom, education and occupation.
Pence not only strives for the domestication of women but also for the control over women’s uteruses.
On March 24, 2016, Pence signed an abortion law that added to the already restrictive abortion laws of Indiana. Though many play up the reason for Pence signing the anti-abortion laws as moral because it protects unborn fetuses from discrimination, it limits the mother’s choice over what happens to her body, a seemingly basic human right.
In 2007, Pence “…was the first to introduce legislation aimed at ‘defunding’ Planned Parenthood…” which provides many pro-women services.
With Pence and Trump in office, women of America must prepare to lose their right over their bodies and what develops inside them. And to deepen that wound, these anti-abortion laws will be created by men who will never personally experience what it is like to consider, let alone go through with, an abortion for any reason.
Thus, it is deadly to Planned Parenthood that Trump and Pence focus solely on the abortion practices available at the health center.
The country’s future leaders appear content with ignoring the variety of services the center provides that are crucial for sexual wellness of all genders, orientations and identities.
According to their “Learn” page, Planned Parenthood provides information on categories such as abortion, birth control, body image, general health care, men’s sexual health, morning-after pill (emergency contraception), pregnancy, relationships, sex and sexuality, sexual orientation and gender, STDs and women’s health.
Planned Parenthood describes themselves as a health center that provides “…up-to-date, clear, medically accurate information…” And with inconsistent sex education standards in America, “medically accurate information” is not so easy to come by.
Health centers like Planned Parenthood are essential to a well-educated and taken care of population in regards to sexual health. Is it not a human right to govern our own sexual wellness?