Our country is one step closer to getting the change we asked for last November. The Senate is set to vote on a bill to fund critical programs for this year.
In the House's omnibus bill:
- Family-planning programs are getting a boost. This includes the domestic family-planning program that provides health care, including birth control, to women and families, and international family-planning programs that provide poor women overseas with contraception and other services.
- Funding for Bush's failed "abstinence-only" programs is going down, which is a step in the right direction.
- The birth-control price crisis is fixed. Students and low-income women experienced a dramatic increase in the price of their birth-control prescriptions due to a mistake in a 2005 bill that went into effect in 2007.
The House just passed this bill last week, but anti-choice senators have put forward four anti-choice attacks. We have to keep the momentum going! President Obama is waiting for the bill to reach him so he can sign it.
Dear Senator [Name],
As your constituent, I'm writing to express my support for the provisions in the Omnibus budget bill that boost family-planning programs, cut abstinence-only spending levels and fix the birth-control price crisis.
The family-planning program, Title X, provides critical health services, such as birth control and annual exams, to women hit hard by job losses in this economic crisis. The United Nations Population Fund and the U.S. Agency for International Development provide much needed assistance to low-income women around the world who lack access to birth control and other family-planning services.
The "abstinence-only" policy has been proven ineffective, so the $14 million cut is a good start. The federal government should not spend taxpayer dollars on programs that don't give our teens the information they need to protect themselves from sexually transmitted diseases.
The birth-control price fix would help restore affordable birth control for college students and low-income women nationwide. Because of a technical error, Congress inadvertently blocked hundreds of family-planning clinics' and college health centers' long-standing ability to purchase low-priced contraceptives, and these providers have been forced to pass on the increased costs to their patients.
[Your comment here]
Thank you for supporting these responsible changes.
