Obama's war on women: No health care for you!

Posted 03/22/2012 06:53 PM ET

IBD:

Leadership: The administration denies funding for a Texas program that serves low-income women because of a law saying the program can't fund Planned Parenthood. Is this how the president protects women's health?

Physician, to coin a phrase, heal thyself. The administration, faithful to the Alinsky technique of demonizing one's opponents and distracting people from real issues, managed to divert attention from ObamaCare's shredding of the Constitution by forcing religious institutions to provide contraceptives in violation of their religious freedom.

Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown law student whose lifestyle allegedly tottered on insolvency unless free contraception was provided, was trotted forth to explain why not forcing others to buy her a product that was freely available for $9 a month somehow constituted a war on women and women's health.

But in what constitutes a real war on women's health, President Obama's Department of Health and Human Services has withdrawn $30 million worth of funding from a Texas Medicaid program that provides health care services for low-income women.

It did so because Texas recently passed a law that said its Women's Health Program could not disperse funds to abortion and contraception providers such as Planned Parenthood.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius personally traveled to Houston to make the announcement that the Obama administration would cut funding of the program and would no longer continue the waiver that Texas had previously been given to continue funding of the program temporarily.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has issued an opinion declaring that federal law allows states to exclude abortion providers and their affiliated organizations from Medicaid. In a letter to Obama, Texas Gov. Perry accused the administration of trying to violate states' rights "by mandating which health providers the state of Texas must use."

WHP provides health services to 130,000 low-income women. Of the more than 1,000 certified WHP providers across the state, the Texas law excludes fewer than 100 Planned Parenthood providers. Yet the Obama administration is willing to cut off all the other providers and all the women who receive health care through them in pursuit of its ideological agenda.

Texas considers Planned Parenthood, which performs 300,000 abortions a year, a poor allocation of public funds intended to promote women's health, noting they cannot treat breast cancer and do not have a single mammogram machine in the entire state of Texas. But if you want an abortion or contraceptives, Planned Parenthood provides one-stop shopping for that.

Nor does Planned Parenthood need public funds. As we've noted, when the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced it was planning to stop giving money to Planned Parenthood, within hours some 6,000 donors pledged a total of $400,000. A family in Dallas offered $250,000, and New York's Mayor Bloomberg promised to match that.

There is enough private money to keep any number of Sandra Flukes from bankruptcy without shredding the First and 10th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution by forcing a contraceptive mandate on religious institutions and sovereign states.

Health and Human Services accepted a recommendation by the Institute of Medicine that contraceptives and abortafacient drugs be included in the section of drugs and services that insurance plans must cover under "preventative care." This inclusion only makes sense if the Obama administration considers pregnancy itself to be an illness or disease. Do they?

We would argue that ObamaCare in its entirety is a war on women's health and that of everybody else because it rations care through cost controls, inhibits medical innovation and will determine not only what care will be available but who is valuable enough to get it.

It is regrettable that in order to satisfy Planned Parenthood's agenda, the Obama administration would cut funding of needed health care services by other providers and let these women fend for themselves. Sandra Fluke, call your office.