Trump team to stop family-planning funding as it reviews whether it’s being used for DEI programs

[IwantToRetire]

The Trump administration is planning to freeze tens of millions of dollars in federal grants to organizations providing family planning and other reproductive health services, as it reviews whether the funds violate the president’s order to cease all government-backed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) work.

A Health and Human Services spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the plan, that the department was reviewing grants to make sure they complied with the crackdown on DEI.

The freeze to the Title X program could impact as much as $120 million worth of grants to a network of roughly 4,000 clinics providing free and discounted pregnancy testing, contraception, sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing and treatment, and evaluations and testing for infertility.

Planned Parenthood, whose affiliates could lose roughly $20 million if the paused grants are ultimately cut, reacted with alarm.

“The Trump-Vance-Musk administration wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary, and they’ll end people’s access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more to do it,” Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Alex McGill Johnson told the newspaper.

https://www.aol.co.uk/trump-team-stop-family-planning-211853228.html

That's criticism, not discussion

Authoritarianism is not allowing people access to the democratic process to produce legislation and policy, because you think that somehow you have the light of truth on your side. That is literally how the most oppressive regimes of the 20th century worked.

So what? We should not criticise anti-woman government decisions? All governments or just the Trump one?

Away with you and your 'feminist discourse' bollocks.

This is FWR! If feminist discourse bollocks isn't your cup of tea, you're going to get really annoyed here.😆

Legislation is how laws are supposed to get made. If they wanted a good, solid law at the federal level that would have been the way to go. They didn't, some would say due to wanting a wedge issue, though I also think they could not see a way to compromise between the two entrenched lobbyist positions, without negative political fallout.

A tortuous and political court decision is hardly the same thing and it only remained as long as it did because the balance of the SC was politically motivated to keep it.

And as I said previously, it has been a long held feminist principal and aim to take our reproductive freedoms away from legislation and for it to be treated as a women's private medical decisions as it would be for a man to have a vasectomy. We don't have law makers legislating on their right to bodily autonomy.

Women in the US had a constitutional right to abortion (which many feminists agreed wasn't far enough) and now we have an authoritarian government ripping up that right and giving it to legislatures to assign their own political or moral limits to it.

So maybe if we hadn't had the many pages of weird threats and veiled insults earlier, there would have been an opportunity to discuss the points you make here.

Yes, indeed. Maybe even something approaching a productive discussion, instead of this tedious sniping.

No, not all feminists think that is the only issue involved in abortion. That is the way some feminists have approached it. And some of these have quite high-handedly tried to tell other women that they need to toe that line or they aren't real feminists.

Even on FWR, you find lots of women think there are further ethical issues with abortion, beyond what an individual woman wants, and that a vasectomy is not a comparable procedure.

The US Constitution hasn't changed at all. In Roe v Wade, the court had ruled that their privacy rights embedded in the constitution implied a right to abortion. And that's now been overturned - the ruling says that was never the case. No one has taken away something that was clearly there - the courts have ruled on what's come before them. The ruling isn't a surprise because even at the time of the original ruling, many saw it as a poor interpretation of the constitution - why would anyone expect that it would stand?

No, not all feminists think that is the only issue involved in abortion.

Which feminists don't believe women are entitled to equal bodily autonomy as men and what is their feminist argument for that?

Even on FWR, you find lots of women think there are further ethical issues with abortion, beyond what an individual woman wants, and that a vasectomy is not a comparable procedure.

Clearly there are, I'm asking how that's feminist?

I'd say the sniping that has veered away from discussion has been all the responses or actually engaging with any points but accusing people of smearing people or blame. It's been reiterate over and over that's not the case and the points reiterated with no discussion. Did you have those suggestions on what democrats should have done?

I didnt see any Weird threats and veiled insults? Have you reported to MNHQ? Threats have no place on this site.😟

You will never understand any other POV if you can only think or issues in relation to your own framing.

Many feminists don't think that feminism means that all other moral considerations are irrelevant.

Just as an example, most women, feminist or not, don't think children's rights should be scarified so that women could do whatever they want with regard to their own children. There is a balance of interests to be considered.

Many women - I would say most women - think a late term fetus has interests which are impacted by abortion and this has significant moral weight. Some would say that is so earlier on as well. Therefore they see abortion as involving a weighing of interests and impacts on a social level.

You seem completely unaware of the issues with the USA abortion laws.

One issue is that there was no limit on the number of months and so abortion was legal right up until the time of birth. Now, many people will shout that never happened, but the issue was that it was legal.

The other 'feminist' argument is that women can be coerced to have abortions when they actually might want the baby. Or they might be threatened. Or they might be too poor. Or not have medical insurance that will allow them to be able to have the baby in an actual hospital. It isn't all about body autonomy, there are lots of angles and issues that 'feminists' should be thinking about.

It isn't just about 'legal or not'.

It's not my own framing, it's a principal of feminism. Those women can have all those thoughts they wish as it pertains to their own bodies and pregnancies and if they perceive a foetus as an "child" . If they support restricting another woman's access to abortion because of those opinions, that is not feminist, it just isn't. Your own personal morality towards a foetus isn't everyone's, and arguing it should be legislated and applied to women and therefore restrict their bodily autonomy is no different to patriarchal control over women's bodies. You can say the word feminist all you like - it doesn't make it feminist. Which is why if you hold such a viewpoint of disregarding the right to bodily autonomy, you aren't coming from a place of supporting women's rights. You're coming from a place of wanting legislation to uphold your own moral viewpoint, one that interestingly happens to be the same as the religious right 🤔

So we have another coincidental right wing anti choice bingo - late term abortion. Yes it was 'legal' because those abortions are performed for severe healthcare reasons. It's a common trope of antichoicers that women are aborting babies up to birth out of preference, regardless of all the facts that those abortions are heartbreaking circumstances of wanted pregnancies.

The other 'feminist' argument is that women can be coerced to have abortions when they actually might want the baby. Or they might be threatened. Or they might be too poor. Or not have medical insurance that will allow them to be able to have the baby in an actual hospital. It isn't all about body autonomy, there are lots of angles and issues that 'feminists' should be thinking about.

What's the feminist argument for restricting abortion access based on that? Obviously forcing anyone to have an abortion of a baby they want isn't ok. We don't infantilise women by taking that access away. I'm not actually surprised by what you're spouting (the same antichoice rhetoric of the religious right and how they're restricting our freedom to protect us) but it's quite laughable when you took such offense that posters may have been accusing you of being right wing. Feminists also happen to support better access and funding for maternal healthcare and childcare, it isn't an either or. Once again, you can't parrot right wing patrichal ideas and chuck the words "some feminists think" and now it's feminism.

I think I've lost track of this. I thought the review of PP had fuck all to do with abortion?

The funding is completely separate?

It's family planning funding they're cutting, within the wider context that they are constantly trying to cut PP funding so as to remove them as an option for abortion provision knowing that in many areas PP is all women have. And in the context of at the same time as announcing this pardoning anti abortion activists who have targeted PP.

HaHa. No. I have my big girl pants on

Can you not discuss without insults?

Why do you find right wing patrichal ideals an insult? Unless you missed out in your post where you disagree with them, you otherwise have stated nothing dissimilar them. Clearly I'm missing it and I don't mean to insult you, where do you differ with the right wing objection to abortion access?.

No, because we are guilty until proved innocent. And of course none of us will ever be pure enough to be proved innocent. They are not looking for feminist discourse. They are looking for reasons to burn us

I think the Democrats in the US love having a carrot to dangle in front of women. Sort of keeping women hostage and using it to manipulate for power. It appears they wouldn’t dream of actually legislating because it would deprive them of saying there is a worse bogeyman than them. Mind you, after the shit show they unleashed on women and children I’m not sure so many women are entirely convinced of them being a lesser bogeyman anymore. They seem to expect women to be so very grateful and pledge fealty for some crumbs, and their votes owed for a lifetime. Feck that. Feckers on the left and feckers on the right.

Obama told Planned Parenthood (the very one) in 2007 that the first thing he’d do if he got into power was codify abortion rights into federal law. First thing, mind! When he got into power, did he feck. It was a definite ‘I will in my hole legislate for those witches. I need to prioritise things that will benefit the important humans (male ones).’ All that is my vernacular paraphrasing and personal summing up of the situation. I think his PR only allowed him to say that it wasn’t his priority anymore. He had the numbers. I suppose we all know politicians lie to get votes. Bit of a kick in the teeth to the women who may have voted for the Dems based on that.

I suppose women have to decide for themselves at each election which party they recognise as the biggest threat to women’s rights overall. Or which might deliver the best things for women overall. Ignoring the pontificating and manipulative entitlement by any party which tries to make women feel they ‘owe’ anyone their vote.

Huh? It's funny that this is a feminist discussion board and yet anyone who has posted on this thread advocating women's rights as a key priority have been called a TRA activist, smearers, bots, trolls. No need to engage further you and Tempest have quite proved suggestions post that there are people on FWR who aren't posting about trans issues from a women's right agenda but instead fueling an agenda that will ultimately work against women. As this thread demonstrates. I note anyone who suggestion she was wrong and smearing women who care about women's reproductive rights have gone very quiet.

Wot?