Title X and The US Government's Infatuation with Controlling the Female Body

Like so many features under the Trump administration, women's rights have been under attack. The Republican party agenda for decades has been infatuated with denying women access to health care, emphasizing the deterrent of access to reproductive health care. A recent accomplishment made by this new administration was the repeal of Title X, a program that provided family planning services to low-income individuals, illustrating that a person's personal life and health is also political.

In Professor Block's first lecture, she mentioned the phrase, "The personal is political." It was coined by Carol Hanisch, a feminist who wrote an essay for The Women's Liberation, a magazine. In her piece, Hanisch writes about how the issues and experiences that women have in their personal lives directly affect the political world, a world in which they are improperly represented. "Can you imagine what would happen if women, blacks, and workers (my definition of worker is anyone who has to work for a living as opposed to those who don’t. All women are workers) would-stop blaming ourselves for our sad situations? It seems to me the whole country needs that kind of political therapy," (Hanisch). Women and minorities were (and still are, however, to a lesser extent than the time this essay was written) forced to lead miserable lives according to the guidelines that society deemed to be acceptable. Women were expected to stay home, stay quiet, and raise children. Blacks were experiencing segregation and struggling to assert their right to vote. Workers were operating under unsafe conditions. Rather than blaming themselves for their sorry states, Hanisch believed it was crucial for these oppressed groups to verbalize their personal experiences that they have been forced to endure as a result of society and take to the political sphere and assure that laws are passed to prevent themselves and others from experiencing the same grievances they have experienced.

In the current day and age, the personal is still the political in the context of Title X in the sense that women's health and ability to family plan, private matters that directly affect an individual, will now suffer at the hands of the federal government. For Republicans and Right to Life advocates, the repeal of Title X is an enormous victory. It means that Planned Parenthood, an organization that has become notorious for being the most prominent provider of abortions, will be unable to receive federal funding. However, abortion is not Planned Parenthood's most utilized service. The establishment provides important health services to low-income women such as, "Well-woman exams, lifesaving cervical and breast cancer screenings, birth control, contraception education, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), including HIV," (PlannedParenthoodAction.org). In fact, the federal funding was not even utilized for abortion practices, but for these very health services (Sherman, Politifact.com). Pro-life politicians like Vice President Mike Pence who cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to revoke Title X, however, is not eliminating abortion but is rather endangering the lives of women all across America who, without such an institution, would find it harder to have control over their own personal lives and health. They would be unable to access the resources necessary to prevent them from unintentionally expanding their families or learning if they are or are not free of an STI. A matter as personal as a woman having access to a resource that would allow her to learn the status of her sexual health has been decided by the government. It is important for people all across the nation to speak out through protests, rallies, and donations to make the personal political and to assert the fact that a woman's access to healthcare should not be a luxury.

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Works Cited

Parenthood, Planned. "Title X: America's Family Planning Program." Planned Parenthood Action

Fund. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

Powell, Ellen. "Senate Title X Funding Vote: What Does It Mean for Planned Parenthood? (+video)." The Christian Science Monitor. The Christian Science Monitor, 03 Apr. 2017. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

"The Job Safety Law of 1970: Its Passage Was Perilous." United States Department of Labor. N.p., 27 May 2016. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

"The Personal Is Political: The Original Feminist Theory Paper at the Author's Web Site." The Personal Is Political: The Original Feminist Theory Paper at the Author's Web Site. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017.

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Links

https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/health-care-equity/title-x

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2017/0403/Senate-Title-X-funding-vote-What-does-it-mean-for-Planned-Parenthood-video

https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/history/osha

http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html