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

And when people point out any of the right wing agenda to remove all funding to PP by attacking other services the topic shifts to failures of the left..

The poster said "This board is not populated in the main by women who care about women, it is populated by those fueling an agenda that will ultimately work against women. As this thread demonstrates."

Note In the main.

That post, the one I responded to initially, absolutely was claiming the majority of the women who, like me, post on FWR are patriarchal and anti-feminist. And as a woman who posts on FWR I do take that personally.

Furthermore I believe that poster was cynically leveraging Trump's anti women actions to delegitimise the voices of the women here because they disagree with women having a place to speak out about other unrelated issues, as their later posts made clear.

Because @suggestionsplease1 said that left wing politics was less authoritarian (or similar) and everyone was reacting to that statement in that moment.

It is not that the failures of the left is the more important focus, it is just where the conversation was at the time.

And it would have been interesting to engage with that statement about left wing being less authoritarian as there are many examples of it not being true, despite the common idea that left=goodies, right =baddies. It is not always that simple.

I think you perhaps really believe that everyone here is some sort of right wing apologist when they really aren’t. But they are interested in a discussion that doesn’t require equal condemnation of the evils of the left and the right in every post, just in case someone accuses you of being part of the wrong tribe.

Fair point. I'll rephrase.

If you think I am "Defending or supporting cuts to women's services and the reversal of the rights feminists fought hard for" you really have not read the thread.

The point is that the left seems to be acting as if they themselves don't care about protecting women's rights, as they are prepared to sacrifice them to placating TRAs.

PP hasn't behaved like an organization that sees itself as having an important health care role that needs to be stable and available, it acts like a radical activist group. Which is why they are now in this situation.

I have read the thread and your merailing posts with how you object being called right wing and how posters are trying to silence you.

You've said little about the damage being done to women under the Trump regime.

If you took it so personally I'm not sure why your train of thought went to listing off the failures of the left, the democrats. Dismissing discussion of the current right wing attack as "just what the right does" is an odd choice too. I read suggestions post in the context of previous posters agreeing with cuts to PP funding, which you hadn't posted so again I'm not sure why you took it as a personal attack and then derailed to the failures of the left. Given posters before them claimed PP should be wiped from the face of the earth, they're demented, mutilating children, why was your trigger someone saying some people on FWR support right wing policies which ultimately harm women instead of responding to any other those posters with an articulated argument about protecting women's rights or even commenting on trump's anti women actions? It's just very odd.

If the women’s reproductive health services provided by planned parenthood are under threat due to restriction on their funding of their TRAs activities then that is on planned parenthood.

But the left aren't in power and aren't the ones pushing an agenda against PP and women's access to abortion in general, why can't the discussion be on the current right wing government and their policies and ultimate agenda?

There are a number of reasons some people feel negatively about PP. Just because they are an abortion provider doesn't mean that even a very left wing person will think they are a positive organization.

There have been quite a few cases in the news, and on detrans forums, if you follow this issue, of young women being given hormones etc after almost no discussion by PP. So although good numbers are hard to come by, it's pretty clear these things are happening there. And I suppose we've all seen the "do chickens cry" lady.

Some people have an issue with their origins as a eugenics organization.

And some people dislike them because of scandals they have had over the years, or just reports of poor care, maybe especially for minors.

No matter how you slice it they are a very ideological organization and that informs their practice. Not everyone thinks that is a great way to practice medicine.

I think Trump has pushed abortion down to the state level and seems inclined to leave it there.

@nutmeg7
But they are interested in a discussion that doesn’t require equal condemnation of the evils of the left and the right in every post, just in case someone accuses you of being part of the wrong tribe.

That's a weird paragraph to include when you're defending equal condemnation of left and right

I’m done with people policing my language. Sterilising children.

Giving medication known to be very likely to cause vaginal and uterine atrophy requiring a hysterectomy. Known to cause permanent abnormal and painful enlargement of the clitoris, sometimes after a few weeks of use. Known to be very likely to cause hair loss. Known to cause increased levels of suicidality. Known to cause seriously elevated levels of liver disease. Known to cause heart problems.

They may not have ‘sterilising children’ in their mission statement but their actions are knowingly causing this. They can’t be left to carry on. This is on them, stop blaming the people calling this out.

BTW, Afaik many cases of people taking cross sex hormones also take hormone suppressants like puberty blockers to suppress their natural hormones.

Which is a massive roll back on women's rights, something some usually very vocal posters on FWR have little to say about. Maybe suggestions had a point that not every poster here claiming to support women's sex based rights actually does.

Interesting - I find it very odd that you would read that post as referring only to previous posts in this thread given that the very first sentence literally said "Mumsnet FWR is (and always has been) used by posters with an ultimate patriarchal agenda to manipulate those who are naive enough to believe that trans rights are the single biggest issue facing women today."

But again, I have made myself very clear. You obviously have a different narrative that for some reason you want to apply to me but that is on you.

Because the only way to oust one lot next election is if enough people vote for the other lot. And that means the other lot have to be electable and not batshit

Again, you don't have to police your language if your focus is solely on stopping CSH and your happy to sacrifice women's access to abortion in the process. If you cared about attacks on women's healthcare clinics, you would. So why don't you just say where you're coming from?

You've made yourself extremely clear that you have nothing to say about Trump and the right wing attacks on women's rights except "that's what they do" and that you're not interested in debating posters who are happy for women's access to abortion to be affected, only debating posters who address the right wing agenda.

Trump could safeguard every American child by making puberty blockers and child sterilisation illegal. No need to touch women's organisations at all. The assault on women's rights is happening because of the Trump administration's misogyny.

It's wholly detrimental to women in the USA and women further afield.

And yet all these left leaning feminists aren't actively involving themselves in the political left to affect change clearly. If FWR is so left leaning and most people agree with them, why isn't this manifesting in the left? Why all these years later down the issue isn't there a proper left leaning GC movement? Why didn't party of women run on any actual left wing policies? It's notable from this thread many posters don't prioritise poor marginalised women and their access to healthcare, given how little they care about them it's hard to see the left wing principals behind their logic.

Oh good god. Where to start with this???

Prisons
Rape crisis centres
Intimate care for elderly women
Woman in hospital
Lesbian groups
DV shelters
Vulnerable schoolgirls

Those poor marginalised women, threatened by an insidious ideology that centres men in every one of those situations?

Weren't you the poster who mimimsed discussion of the need to protect women's right to abortion as "the abortion leash". Where do you stand on abortion rights?

Yes, that is what they do. They make no bones about it. The people who vote for them want it.

I'm not into performative handwringing about how dreadful it all is. We know that.

I'm into what needs to be done to stop it happening. And that means for now donating and supporting organisations which are active on the ground which I have already said I do, and for the longer term having a credible opposition that people want to vote for, which is what the Democrats failed to do this time round and is why I am talking about what the Left got wrong and why ignoring that in favour of saying how gosh-darn-awful the right are is the wrong tactic.

But tell me, what do you think needs to be done to stop this?

Those groups also face other issues relating to their rights as women unrelated to that ideology, that the right wing will only make worse. What's your feminist positions on those groups unrelated to the trans issue?