Kierra Jones, a member of the Women’s Initiative team at The Center For American Progress wrote this article: “Medicaid Cuts Pushed by Republicans Could Devastate Access to Reproductive Care and Contraception” for Teen Vogue. Click article link above to view the full article. Below are excerpts from the article:
“Medicaid is one of the major public programs that makes birth control affordable and accessible for millions of low-income women.
“Without Medicaid, many women will lose access to affordable contraception and be forced to forgo it along with other essential family planning benefits. That matters because contraception isn’t just about preventing pregnancy. It’s about ensuring that women and all people who can become pregnant have the ability to control their bodies and their economic stability. Birth control allows women to pursue careers, education, and personal goals without the fear of an unplanned pregnancy derailing those plans. Medicaid is directly connected to the health and future of entire families.
“The potential gutting of the Medicaid program should alarm everyone. Because of the people Medicaid serves, cuts would disproportionately affect women of reproductive age, threatening their access to birth control, maternity care, and other essential reproductive health services.”
Karel Riley works with the People’s Tribuneand Tribuno del Pueblo, as a writer and contributor on human rights and women’s issues. “I’ve been a feminist since early adulthood. As a clerical worker, I joined a union drive with AFSCME seeking comparable wages to men for female-dominated jobs, and we were partially successful. In the mid-80’s our union participated in the historic Hormel strike in Minnesota. Later, I joined support for a local welfare rights organization,” she says.
