If by “Culture Wars” You Mean Essential Healthcare for Millions, Then Sure…
Last week, the Atlantic published an article called “Planned Parenthood Still Believes It Can Win the Culture Wars,” prompted by the measure in the House of Representatives health care bill that would defund Planned Parenthood for a term of one year. Of course, the bill does not name Planned Parenthood specifically, but targets “non-profit organizations that provide family-planning services, including abortions, and get more than $350 million in reimbursements under Medicaid.” As the Atlantic points out, the CBO identified one organization that this would impact.
You guessed it, Planned Parenthood.
Defenders of Planned Parenthood point out that the organization doesn’t just do abortions, but provides much needed healthcare such as maternity care, STD testing, cancer screenings, contraceptives, and a whole host of other services. To defund Planned Parenthood is to remove health care access for low-income women across the country, many of whom have no other options besides Planned Parenthood.
So why doesn’t the organization just separate its abortion services into another organization, leaving it’s other health care services in tact, critics (and the article) ask? The answer the article gives is just what the headline says — that Planned Parenthood and Cecile Richards still believe they can win the “culture wars” and convince Americans that access to abortion is a fundamental right.
The article frames the issue as a win/loss scenario — a series of battles and games with some ultimate outcome, a day when either all Americans will agree with Richards, or won’t, and the issue will have been decided once and for all. Our battle is for the hearts and minds of the American people — can we convince them that we have the right to abortion services, or not? Tune in for the season finale at 9 pm/8 pm central.
Except for women across the country, the battle is more fraught. Our need to convince the world that we deserve access to abortion services is folded into a much more significant conversation, one in which we are fighting for our lives.
In its attempts to defund Planned Parenthood, Congress says, “We’d rather you endure disease and poverty than let you control your own body,” and “the idea of a baby is more important to us than the reality of your body and your life.” By framing the abortion debate as a contest of wills, a battle of ideas, the Atlantic ignores the real human lives at stake. For every person we cannot convince we are human and deserving of human autonomy, there is a person whose body is no longer their own, who has been reduced to a vessel for the mere idea of a life that, unless it is white and wealthy and male, is already facing a similar fight.
The human cost of a measure like this falls disproportionately on marginalized populations, people who already have enough trouble convincing their government that they are human and thus worthy of care. Low-income people, people of color, trans men and women, people with HIV or AIDS, the disabled community — these are people who rely on Planned Parenthood (and Medicaid, but that’s another essay) for access to healthcare, many of whom wouldn’t have access to important life saving services otherwise. While the article acknowledges this, it does not include abortion in those services. It does not talk about abortion as an issue of economic justice. It does not talk about the physical, emotional or financial toll pregnancy takes, about those who cannot afford the strain on their well being.
To win the so-called “culture wars” is to finally convince the world that we are human, that we are capable of making the best choices for ourselves and our bodies, that we are not empty space waiting to be filled. Nature abhors a vacuum, she rushes in to give it life. But we are not vacuums — life is already there. It’s important and it’s ours, and we are not giving it up.
