Three years after Texas’s Republican legislature gutted the state’s family planning budget, Erica Hellerstein sheds some light on how these cuts have affected the state’s Hispanic community:
Reeling from accusations of a “war on women,” Republican state senators last year proposed adding $100 million for women’s health services back into the state’s primary-care program. But advocates say it’s too little, too late. “It’s hard to put back together a system that’s been dismantled,” said Sarah Wheat, vice president for community affairs for Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas.
The cuts have had a disproportionate impact on the million-plus residents living in the overwhelmingly Latino, notoriously impoverished Rio Grande Valley. Nine of the valley’s 32 state-funded family planning clinics have shut down, while others reduced services and raised fees, according to a joint report from the Center for Reproductive Rights and National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. Before the cuts, basic reproductive services like Pap tests, breast exams, contraceptive services and counseling, and STI testing, were available at clinics for little to no cost. But the shutdowns have ushered in a new era for Texas women: higher costs, fewer services. Between 2010 and 2012, the number of women in the valley getting family-planning services at clinics funded by the Texas Department of State Health Services plummeted by 72 percent, according to the NLIRH report.
The Dish 