Two Victories For American Women

I guess you have to take your victories where you can find them. The Republicans may be winning the war against the middle class - the current stage of this war is comparable to the siege at Petersburg in the final conflict of the Civil War that brought Lee's Army of Northern Virginia to its knees - but the far right had some serious setbacks in the war against women. After fighting increased protections for women in federal health care policy and after trying to defund Planned Parenthood, the right was dealt a blow when the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it will adopt expert recommendations to require health insurers to cover contraception and several other women's preventive health services without charging anyone co-payments. So health care in these United States just became a little more humane - more healthy and caring, in fact.

Meanwhile, in Kansas, Planned Parenthood won a major victory - for now - when U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten blocked the state from denying funding to the state's Planned Parenthood chapter, dealing Republican lawmakers in the Sunflower State their second major legal setback to their recent moves against women's clinics associated with abortion. Planned Parenthood is suing to overturn the Kansas law that blocks funding to Planned Parenthood in order to prevent state funding of abortion services, even though only one Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas - a clinic in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park - provides abortion services and does not use government funds for that purpose. The clinics in Wichita and the town of Hays use funding for health care services, nothing more.

The law, which requires federal family planning money granted to Kansas by the federal government to go first to public health departments and hospitals without any Planned Parenthood funding left over, is still on the books. But now two judges have blocked its implementation while the Planned Parenthood lawsuit against the legislature in Topeka works its way through the courts. This allows federal money to continue to reach the clinics for the time being. With the law on their side in the processing of the case, Planned Parenthood may have a leg up in the final ruling.

To be continued . . .