Trump's Ass Backwards Approach to Stopping the HIV Epidemic

In addition to the scandal of allowing Gilead raking in billions of dollars and imposing astronomical prices for PrEP, a totally government and charity developed drug, the Trump/Pence regime is moving to slash funding to family planning clinics that provide free HIV testing to the poor, including poor women who increasingly make up those being diagnosed with the virus.  The Trump/Pence motivation is simple: attack family planning clinics to please the anti-abortion Christofascists who remain the regime's most loyal base of support.  Never mind that abortion services/referrals are offered by only a small percentage of such clinics which often provide the only means of medical treatment for the poor - a group that Trump despises, especially those who are non-white. Such ass backward actions reveal the disingenuous nature of Trump's claim he wants to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.  A piece in Politico looks at the damage the Trump/Pence approach will do to stopping the rate of HIV infections (which is the worse in the South/Bible Belt).  Here are excerpts:

Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report detailing the state of the HIV epidemic in the United States. One finding stood out: Nearly 40 percent of new HIV transmissions come from a relatively small group of people who don’t know they have the virus.

In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump announced an initiative to end the HIV epidemic in our country by 2030. . . . . There’s just one problem: The Trump administration is also cutting funding to many of the safety net medical clinics that do a significant number of these tests.

One reason that some Americans don’t know they have HIV is that they lack access to routine health care. While millions of people have gained access to health care through Obamacare or the expansion of Medicaid that accompanied it, there remains a significant coverage gap in states that decided not to expand Medicaid, and it’s those states, many of them in the South, which have the highest rates of HIV infection.

For the more than 2.5 million poor, uninsured Americans who cannot get Medicaid or any financial support to purchase Obamacare, one of the only remaining places they can get health care, including low-cost or free HIV testing, is at so-called Title X clinics.

The Title X Family Planning Program was enacted by Congress in 1970 and it is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing all individuals, regardless of their ability to pay, with family planning and related preventive health services including HIV testing. In establishing Title X, Congress made clear that its major goal was to “decrease adverse health and financial effects on children, women, and their families of inadequately spaced childbearing” by providing information, access to birth control and preventative health services. For nearly 50 years, this government-funded program has greatly improved access to vital medical care for millions of low-income, uninsured people.

Currently, there are nearly 4,000 Title X-funded family planning clinics across the U.S., and they serve approximately 4 million people each year. In addition to providing family planning services like low-cost or free birth control, Title X clinics also provide low-income men and women with services such as free testing for HIV, other sexually transmitted infections, and breast and cervical cancer screening.

[N]early half a million men also receive care in these clinics each year, mostly driven by their need for testing services. In 2017 alone, Title X clinics performed 1,192,119 confidential HIV tests, resulting in 2,195 new HIV diagnoses.

Another key component of Trump’s plan is to focus on geographic HIV hotspots. The Southern U.S. is the current epicenter of the national HIV epidemic; Southern states account for over half of new HIV diagnoses despite having only 37 percent of the population. This is particularly true for women; of all U.S. women recently diagnosed with HIV, 56 percent were living in the South. In fact, my home state of Georgia has the highest rate of new HIV diagnoses in the country.

In states like Georgia that did not expand Medicaid, Title X clinics serve as the sole source of heath care for the majority of their female clients.

Sadly though, the administration announced in February changes to Title X that will result in cutting funding to a sizable portion of family planning clinics. The motivation for these cuts is purely political, with the singular goal of removing Planned Parenthood and other medical clinics that provide abortions or refer patients for abortions out of the Title X network within the coming months. As it happens, only 13 percent of all Title X clinics are operated by Planned Parenthood, and an additional 26 percent are nonprofit, community-based family planning clinics, many of which may be in jeopardy of losing funding as well.

Title X funds have never been allowed to pay for abortions, but the new rule will cut funding to family planning clinics solely because they provide or refer patients elsewhere for abortions. Due to the loss of federal funds, some of these vital safety net clinics may close, others will have to lay off staff and reduce hours, and many may have to reduce services—like HIV testing—in order to offset costs.

Rather than dismantling Title X clinics, the Trump administration should leverage and expand on the important role that this network of family planning clinics has always played in providing HIV testing to the 4 million people they serve each year.

I]t’s time to increase funding to family planning clinics to expand HIV testing, not decrease access to HIV testing through politically motivated efforts that may result in the closing of vital safety net clinics.

As always, actions speak louder than words and Trump's actions send a message to the poorest Americans: just get sick and die.

Trump and Male Christofascists War on Poor Women

Although the Trump/Pence regime has rankled its Christofascist supporters with the alleged effort to decriminalize homosexuality across the globe - personally, I think it is a ruse - it has not failed to thrill the GOP's religious extremist base when it comes to abortion and depriving poor women of access to birth control and basic medical access. Now, in a rule released last week, a prohibition has been put in place that prohibits Title X, a federal family-planning program that serves around four million low-income women, from funding organizations that also provide abortions.  Planned Parenthood is the principal target.  That the organization is the sole source of medical access to many poor women isn't even on Trump or Christofascists' radar. To me, it's a further demonstration of the far right's attitude that poor people simply need to die and disappear even as the "godly folk" park their wide, hypocrisy filled asses in church pews. A column in the New York Times looks at this latest attack on poor women and their right to control their own bodies.  Here are excerpts (for the record, I am not pro-abortion per se, but I believe in medical access for all and that medical decision should not be in the hands of those who cling to Bronze Age myths):

In “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Margaret Atwood’s ever-resonant tale of misogynist dystopia, Christian fascism has a sordid, perverse underbelly. On the surface, the Republic of Gilead, Atwood’s imaginary successor to America, is a place of totalitarian religious austerity. But as the book’s enslaved narrator discovers, the society’s leaders also maintain a brothel, Jezebel’s, full of women who couldn’t fit into the new order. It’s the inevitable flip side of a regime that dehumanizes women, reducing them to their reproductive organs.

Donald Trump’s administration turns the Gilead model upside down. Its public image is louche and decadent, with tabloid scandal swirling around the president and many of his associates. This can make it hard to focus on the unprecedented lengths the administration is going to curtail American women’s reproductive rights and enrich the anti-abortion movement.

On Friday, the Trump administration escalated its war on Planned Parenthood and the women who use it. It released a rule prohibiting Title X, a federal family-planning program that serves around four million low-income women, from funding organizations that also provide abortions. Further, the administration instituted an American version of the global gag rule, barring doctors and nurses receiving Title X funds from making abortion referrals to their patients except in certain emergency situations.

The rule is meant to cut Planned Parenthood, which serves 41 percent of Title X recipients, out of the program. But for many women who rely on Title X, there are no alternatives. Planned Parenthood’s president, Dr. Leana Wen, told me that in Wisconsin, as of 2017, Planned Parenthood served 80 percent of Title X patients and was the only Title X provider in seven counties. In Ohio, Planned Parenthood was the only Title X provider in nine counties. “We know that when patients cannot access their provider of choice, they delay care,” or they end up forgoing care altogether, she said.

The new regulation jettisons a requirement that Title X clinics provide “medically approved” family planning services. That means that funds that once went to Planned Parenthood could flow instead to anti-abortion groups that promote so-called natural family planning. Unless the courts halt the new policy, struggling women who need refills on their birth control pills could get federally funded lectures on the rhythm method instead.

This move to turn a lifesaving women’s health program into pork for the religious right should be major news. Instead, it’s been overshadowed by a series of scandals, each offering telling glimpses of the sexual ethics of Trumpworld’s golf-shirted Commanders.

On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that prosecutors working under former Miami U.S. attorney Alex Acosta, now Trump’s secretary of labor, broke the law in the process of making an inexplicably lenient plea deal with the financier Jeffrey Epstein, who’d been accused of sexually abusing underage girls.

Then, on Friday, news broke that the billionaire Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots and a close friend of and donor to Trump, was being charged with soliciting prostitution, part of a wide-ranging Florida sex-trafficking investigation. One of the 100 richest men in the country, Kraft was allegedly a patron of a strip-mall massage parlor staffed by women who, according to police, were virtual prisoners, forced to service up to 1,000 men a year. It’s hard to imagine why a man with Kraft’s resources would visit such a place unless the squalor, and the women’s evident powerlessness, were part of the point. (Kraft has denied the allegations; the police reportedly have video evidence.)

 The cruelty and moral bankruptcy of Trump and his Christofascist supporters is stunning.

Ted Cruz, Planned Parenthood - A War Against Reality

While Scott Walker is hoping that his vow to kill labor unions nationwide will save his sorry ass and cratering campaign, the even more insane Ted Cruz is seemingly hoping - perhaps dreaming is a better term - that shutting down the federal government over funding for Planned Parenthood will save his sinking presidential prospects.  97% of Planned Parenthood's operations go to providing health care to poor women.  But all the GOP and lunatics like Cruz can look at is the 3% of operations.  As for the women who would be kicked to the gutter if Planned Parenthood were forced to close, Cruz and company have no alternative. Just let them die apparently.  Here are excepts from Salon:

The ability of the Republican Party to sabotage its polls and electoral prospects by clinging to narratives built on the hysterical voices shrieking nonsense through conservative minds like Santa Ana winds blasting across the vast desert wastelands of California will never cease to amaze.

Republicans [are] on the verge of leading a government shutdown over another fact-free assertion: That Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of healthcare for the underprivileged in America, is selling off the organs of aborted fetuses for scrap.

The controversy started in July when activists for anti-abortion group the Center for Medical Progress began releasing undercover videos they claimed showed Planned Parenthood executives colluding to sell tissue harvested from aborted fetuses to research labs for huge profits.

Subsequent investigations by at least five states of their Planned Parenthood clinics found no violations of the handling of fetal tissue. An analysis of both the videotapes and the raw footage released by the Center for Medical Progress indicated that, despite claims to the contrary, the allegedly unedited source tapes had in fact been edited, with no indication of what might have been taken out. Not one witness has stepped forward to corroborate the tales of the tapes, which is hard to believe if the disgusting butchery described had actually occurred.

In short, the whole controversy is garbage.

This has not stopped Republicans. First they subjected Planned Parenthood to the “kangaroo court” of Congressional hearings that mostly provided House members the opportunity to grandstand.

The extreme right wing, led by figures like Ted Cruz, is spoiling for this fight, convinced despite all evidence, both and that the Democrats and President Obama will be blamed if federal agencies are shuttered and more World War II veterans can’t get into the memorial on the Washington Mall. Those polling numbers that show otherwise? Lies. Other polls that indicate a majority of the American people don’t want to see Planned Parenthood stripped of its funding? That just means the lamestream media hasn’t really reported this story.

[H]ow can our country function when one half of the ruling political class bases its strategies and policies on nothing but the phantom voices in their heads? 

The answer is, we can’t. If we’re lucky, the candidacy of Donald Trump will cause a Republican Party split big enough to reconfigure the GOP into something resembling a functional organism, purged of the fanatical elements and composed of people who understand that no disagreement is worth turning off all the lights.

Virginia GOP Targets Abortion Clinics - and Women - Yet Again

The twin pillars of The Family Foundation - a Christofascist hate group that parades under the guise of a "family values" organization - are (i) insuring that gays are stigmatized and kept inferior under the laws of Virginia and (ii) ending all abortions in Virginia as well as restricting access to contraception.  Since The Family Foundation controls the Virginia GOP, its agenda and policies become those of the Republican Party of Virginia.  Anyone who claims differently is either a bald face liar or trying desperately to convince themselves that the Virginia GOP hasn't become a religious party.  A number of my former GOP colleagues are in this latter category as they stick their heads in the sand rather than face the reality of the Christofascist take over.  Given the reality of who controls the Virginia GOP, it is no surprise that once again abortion clinics have been subjected to costly regulations and requirements not applicable to comparable out patient surgery facilities.  The goal is simply to shut them all down.  A piece in Politico looks at the latest effort to end abortions and the availability of contraception in Virginia.  Leading the charge is sodomy law supporter, Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli.  Here are highlights:

The Virginia Board of Health gave final approval to a sweeping set of regulations for abortion clinics Friday.   Abortion-rights supporters say the regulations — which would require many clinics in the state to undergo costly renovations to stay in business — have one goal: to put abortion clinics out of existence.

“This is a political attack on abortion, designed to outlaw women’s health centers in the state,” said Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.

Under the new rules, which are the result of a law passed by the Virginia Legislature in 2011, a Virginia clinic that performs more than five abortions a month is categorized as a hospital. And that means Virginia’s 20 licensed abortion providers must now meet a host of new architectural requirements — which could mean anything from replacing the ceilings, to widening the hallways, to installing a drinking fountain.

Elizabeth Nash, state issues manager at the Guttmacher Institute, said about half the states have structural requirements in place for abortion clinics. But Virginia’s new rules, which are similar to those in Utah and Kansas, are “just about the most restrictive,” she said.  Rosemary Wilbur Codding, owner and director of the Falls Church Healthcare Center in Virginia, which provides abortions and gynecological care, said complying with all of the regulations could require her small facility to add five rooms and could cost up to $1 million.

“Realistically, in this climate, for any small business to be able to invest $1 million in unneeded upgrades is just outside of the spectrum of even thinking about,” she continued. “I’m not even sure how I’d manage $100,000.”  Codding said she’s not sure how she can afford to keep her medical center open — but she’s determined to fight the regulations.

Since the law was passed in 2011, finalizing the regulations has been a laborious, contentious process. Last year, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Republican who is anti-abortion, refused to certify the first round of regulations approved by the board, which would have “grandfathered in” existing clinics so they wouldn’t have to rebuild or renovate extensively.