Recently I was watching a short bit by Steven Colbert on his show the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. While I don't usually take much of what they say seriously (it is satirical afterall) they do manage to weave in stories to make fun of which draw attention to points of concern in our republic. For instance take the case of John Kyl who makes wild statistical claims then when proven wrong claims that everything he said was "not intended to be a factual statement" so this opens the door for a "brave new world" of accountability. Lets face it Bush set up the 9/11 hijackings and even funded terrorists themselves, Sarah Palin is a robot, and President Obama was born on the moon (all of these are not intended to be factual statements) but when the people you claim to represent can't assume that the things you say are what you mean what kind of representation or accountaibility can you expect to have. Were this shenanigan by Kyl ignored it would be a great disservice not only to our country but to the image of politicans everywhere, Kyl in my opinon is not a public servant (or if he is he isn't trying very hard to do a good job for those he represents) I believe we should hold our politicans more accountable for what they say and do especially on the floors of our congress and senate, what Kyl said will go into the archives of recorded congressional sessions and may be used in future faulty arguments either for or against Planned Parenthood.
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/381484/april-12-2011/jon-kyl-tweets-not-intended-to-be-factual-statements
I think that the whole "Pap Smears at Walgreens" comment was also a huge part of this kind of rhetoric -- I think that people tend to underestimate the difficulties that women face accessing annual exams, especially if they are low-income. All states are supposed to provide yearly screening for people 55 and older, but the way this breaks down is even more difficult because all states manage this themselves (and a lot of states put this responsibility to indvidual counties). In Wisconsin, Pierce County's public clinic totally shut their doors due to funding issues and services in Dunn County have been drastically reduced, so St. Croix County is experience really long wait times and an even larger stress to their budget. None of this even starts to touch the fact that with HPV, many of the people getting cervical cancer are really young and subsequently not covered by the federal mandate at all. The preventative car is already nonexistent for a lot of people -- if the same women were to go to a Planned Parenthood clinic in Minnesota, they would find that they aren't eligible for the reduced price through the state of Minnesota (because they live in Wisconsin and there is no reciprocity agreement in this department), so these services are pretty scarce.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, if you are dealing with people in Western Wisconsin, it's actually really hard for them to get access to even basic forms of contraceptives like condoms in some cases. While condoms are relatively inexpensive, Kwik Trip is sometimes the only place open 24 hours and they will not sell condoms because the family that owns the chain has objections to selling them. So some people can't just stop on the way home to purchase them, they might have to drive 15 miles one way to do so.
I wouldn't argue with Kyl's assertion that when people need abortions, they go to Planned Parenthood. I think that might be just as much a function of how doctors receive (or in most cases, don't receive) traning to provide abortions because there are, to the best of my understanding, fewer and fewer doctors who are actually trained to perform abortions...and it might just take an organization with the kind of resources that Planned Parenthood has to do things like transporting a single doctor (with security) between South Dakota and Minneapolis / St. Paul. It's kind of a nightmare when you break it all down from the perspective of a functioning non-profit organization.