Republican GOP Plan to Slash Funding for Medi-Cal and Reproductive Health will have Disastrous Consequences for Rural Communities
Republican plans to slash funding for reproductive health will have disastrous consequences for rural communities where access to care is already extremely limited.
“I consider it a death sentence to our community,” says Sarah Hutchinson, Senior Policy Coordinator at ACT for Women and Girls in the Central Valley. We not only have some of the state’s highest teen pregnancy rates, they are also battling spikes in sexually transmitted diseases (STD’s) including HIV and syphilis that are the highest the state’s seen in 25 years. “We have the highest rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia in the state. Syphilis is making a comeback. People are showing up at emergency rooms with full blown AIDS. Less access to testing and treatment could lead to an epidemic,” Hutchinson adds.
All of this stems from the GOP’s plans to defund Planned Parenthood and scale back Medicaid (Medi-Cal in California) which will make access to contraception, testing and education even harder to come by. More than half of the residents in the Central Valley qualify for Medi-Cal and/or subsidies through the Covered California exchange.
Republicans want to punish Planned Parenthood, but local economies will suffer the most by these proposals. Hutchinson’s organization works with marginalized communities in the Central Valley to fight for reproductive justice. Hutchinson says poverty, unemployment and lack of education are barriers to reducing the adolescent birth rate. Central Valley Counties have made progress in reducing teen births, but Kern County still has the highest rate in the state, Tulare and Madera – rank third and fourth highest, while Fresno County is sixth.
“Many of the young people we work with don’t have a car to get to a Planned Parenthood clinic. There is a Planned Parenthood in Visalia that is bare bones. It operates around 25 hours a week, and is about 30 minutes from our rural youth, but the fully funded clinic in Fresno is about 45-90 miles from residents in Tulare County. Young people often feel judged and shamed when they go to Federally Qualified Health Clinics (FQHC’s) and ask for birth control or testing.” Hutchinson also says the process of getting contraceptives at an FQHC can take up to three visits to the clinic; often teens will go for the first appointment but never follow up to get the contraception either because of fear or an inability to get back to the office.
A recent study shows abortion rates are at their lowest rate in history, and researchers believe that free and easy access to contraceptives through the Affordable Care Act is probably the reason for the lower rates of unintended pregnancy. The number of women of reproductive age who were uninsured dropped by a third between 2013 and 2015, according to Adam Sonfield, a senior policy manager of the Guttmacher Institute.
“Three-quarters of all public dollars for family planning come from Medicaid,” Sonfield said. “Half of all births in this country are covered by Medicaid, including two-thirds of all unplanned births. So you start making major changes to Medicaid, the way they’re planning to do, and the implications for reproductive health are extreme.”
In the Central Valley, GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and dismantle Medicaid would mean steady progress towards education, testing and treatment will be reversed. In California, almost a quarter of women who receive Medi-Cal are of reproductive age, and more than half the births through 2013 were Medi-Cal recipients according to the California Department of Health Services.
For now, Republican plans to defund Planned Parenthood have stalled, but lawmakers are expected to revisit the topic at the end of April.
“We will see a dramatic loss in services that are already insufficient” Hutchinson says. “The majority of our youth who have immigrant family members don’t have access to health care. We don’t know if the state will be able to come in and pick up the slack. In a community where silent killers like Syphilis are making a comeback, this is not the time to be taking steps backward. Everyone will be affected.”