For
Immediate Release:
Media Contact: Andrea Gage
Health Care Advocate Laud
Passage of Compromise Budget
Women's
Health Protected and Family Planning Services Preserved
Specifically, the Legislature kept
the state's family planning system intact by:
ü Continuing
to provide state funding for private family planning health centers, which
serve over 31,000 patients in 32 counties by providing critical health services
to low-income women such as breast and cervical cancer screenings, access to
birth control and testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections
(STIs).
ü
Preserving the Medicaid Family Planning Waiver
Program, which provides cervical cancer screenings, breast
exams, access to birth control, and testing and treatment for STIs to over
54,000 low-income women using state and federal funds.
ü
Protecting
ü
Rejecting the Gag Rule, an illegal, unethical
provision proposed by the Assembly leadership that would have prevented health
care providers from informing women about all of their pregnancy options.
The Legislature moved to enhance
women’s access to health care by approving the following:
ü
Expanding access to the Family Planning Waiver
Program by increasing eligibility to those living at 200% of the federal
poverty level.
ü
Increasing funding for the Well Woman Program, which
provides mammograms, pap tests and other important health screenings for women
ages 45 to 64.
ü
Allocating funding to establish a colposcopy
(cervical diagnostic test) clinic in a rural community in
"We
applaud the Legislature for putting partisan politics aside and recognizing
that the public needs and deserves equitable, affordable health care,"
said PPAWI Public Policy Director Chris Taylor. "But this is one small
victory for the people of
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Planned Parenthood Advocates of