NJ to Eliminate All Funding for Women’s Health Clinics

I had a bad feeling about Chris Christie back in October. In the New Jersey gubernatorial race, Jon Corzine had explicitly used women’s issues as a major platform to separate himself from his opponent. Christie’s record and stances on women’s health seemed so striking, that this method of attack seemed like the best approach.

He lost, of course, and Christie assumed the office. As it turns out, Corzine and Corzine’s supporters may have been right– Christie is not pro-woman, particularly on issues of women’s health. He has now proposed to cut all funding to all women’s health and reproductive services in the state. The cuts would completely wipe out all $7.5 million of state funding to about 50 clinics throughout NJ that provide basic health services– prenatal care, std testing, pap smears, mammograms, blood pressure screenings, health counseling and birth control. More than 136,000 women used the services last year, and clinics estimate that they helped prevent 40,000 pregnancies and 19,000 abortions, calculating that this saved the state $150 million.

Most of those 136,000 women were low-income, relying solely on these clinics as their main health care provider, as they lack health insurance. Buying birth control without health insurance can easily cost around $700 a year, an amount women or families may choose to forgo if trying to keep the electricity on or put food on the table. Let alone the issue of health screenings for gynecological diseases or proper prenatal care. They’re not just gambling with women’s bodies, but also with children.

As Deborah Jacobs writes to HuffPo:

It will cost New Jersey — and all of the other states — far more in the long run, leaving a devastating impact on both the economy and society. For every dollar spent on family-planning services, the state saves four dollars in Medicaid expenses. If these cuts go through, only women wealthy enough to afford skyrocketing medical costs or those with stable jobs and good benefits will be able to see a doctor.

Again, low-income women are the ones to pay. Moves like this perpetuate and exacerbate the wide gap between poor and affluent women, and their respective reproductive options. Jacobs also invokes Sandra Day O’Conner’s famous line about reproductive rights to illustrate this point:

“The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives.”

I’m not going to deny that NJ’s budget is a big issue. And reducing the amount spent on some programs and services seems necessary. But completely eliminating funding for women’s health is dangerous, and is also going to have serious financial consequences with an increase in unwanted pregnancies and undiagnosed diseases. Time and time again, services for women are the first and the most drastically cut from budgets. They’re seen as the most expendable. And in this case, funds aren’t cut, they’re eliminated. And furthermore, the DHS withdrew an application for expansion of Medicaid funding that would have cut the costs by 90% of expanding these services. Then there’s the abortion issue. Opponents see the word “abortion” and have no qualms about eliminating funding from any clinic with any connection to the procedure. Without even debating the ‘morality’ of abortion, these facilities do more to prevent abortions than to provide them (and, by the way, aren’t even allowed to use federal funds to provide abortions). But abortion opponents don’t care to recognize that. They think abortion’s a problem but don’t seem to care to figure out a way to fix it.

It’s no surprise that Chris Christie is not pro-choice. He also says he wants to keep abortions as infrequent as possible. Christie, here’s a reality check: You know what will help reduce the number of abortions in your state? Proper access to preventative care, including birth control. You know what will obstruct this access? Cutting health clinics’ entire state funding. These budget cuts are painful to read on many levels, but what one aspect that particularly gets to me is the abortion issue. When abortion rights opponents argue that they’re not anti-woman, that they think women ‘deserve better’ than abortions– and then they completely fail to provide any support for sex education or access to birth control, it’s just blatant hypocrisy. They’re either operating under such a myopic framework that they don’t understand the causality of the two issues, or they actively choose not to care. Either way, it’s shameful and it hurts women. And frankly, it hurts everyone in the end.

Jon Corzine’s Pro-Woman Campaign Approach

Since moving to New York City, I’ve caught quite a few TV ads for both Jon Corzine and Chris Christie’s campaigns in the NJ gubernatorial race. Jon Corzine began a steep uphill battle, due to NJ’s poor economic situation, as well as the July 2009 corruption scandal involving 40-something NJ officials, rabbis, and possible organ trafficking. But what struck me was the direction and focus of his current campaign ads. At least half of what I’ve seen targets women’s issues and GOP candidate Christie’s reluctance to protect women’s health.

I stumbled upon this article from The Nation, which posits that Corzine’s campaign has become revitalized due to his decision to market to the left– not paint himself as a moderate:

What did Corzine do? Instead of steering to the center, or the Blue Dog right, he turned left. Looking to rally Democratic voters, he patched up shaky relations with the state’s unions and linked his campaign so closely to the president that his billboards now feature images of Obama and Corzine…and as Congressional Democrats wavered on the issue, Corzine made healthcare reform a focus of his campaign.

It’s noticeable that Corzine’s campaign has decided to go where few Democrats these days are bold enough to go — the left. But I think what stands out even more to me is his clear decision to make women’s issues at the center of the election. He has powerful TV spots about Christie’s apathy for women’s health screenings, as Christie sides with the insurance companies to not mandate that they cover mammograms or pap smears:

Christie is now on the defensive about the issue, arguing that a mammogram saved his mother’s life.  But his rebuttal seems a little unclear and still reflects a sort of elitism. It sort of gives you the feeling that Christie believes some women should get mammograms– but doesn’t care enough about extending access to all women of all socio-economic statuses.

Additionally, Corzine doesn’t shy away from discussing abortion, with an ad that accuses Christie of not supporting a woman’s right to choose. With an ominous music note in the background, Corzine’s ad zeros in on the subject, highlighting that Christie even supports a constitutional amendment to ban abortion. It’s meant to scare you, and it should— but it’s surprising because few Democrats go that far in their fear mongering on the issue. It’s generally been the tactic of Dems to soften their definition of “pro-choice” — to mitigate their pro-choice voting records with caveats and apologies about how, no, really, abortion is evil, but we should protect it in some circumstances. That sort of back-peddling and side-stepping around the issue always bothers me, and it’s refreshing to see how Corzine doesn’t use that approach:

He has one other ad that ties up a lot of his pro-woman policies– paid family leave, protected health coverage, hospital stays for giving birth, and the right to choose. He’s actually speaking directly at women, not just about them.

Politics is politics, and I don’t know enough about either Corzine or Christie to know for sure which are facts and which are stretches– but the important takeaway is that this election is a rare example of women’s health and rights being at the heart of the fight. It can be a pretty powerful thing.