Today the Trump administration is announcing a rule for family planning clinics that provide safe care for women’s reproductive health like Planned Parenthood. This rule will restrict federal funding for any clinic that performs abortions as a form of family planning. It takes it a step further as well. The rule also states that funding will be withheld “from any facility or program that promotes abortion or refers patients to a caregiver that will provide one” (NY Times). This means that facilities are restricted from even telling patients where they can get safe medical procedures performed.

This sets a dangerous precedent for pretty much any organization that received federal funding and does anything that ultra conservatives, like our president, disagree with. If they can take funding from clinics simply because they disagree with scraping some cells off the uterine lining, where does it end?

Will they take a stab at pulling funding from programs that provide aide to the homeless or the poor and jobless? How about taking money from children’s cancer research? Oh wait, that’s already happened.

It seems contradictory that they are so concerned with the life of a human that doesn’t even exist yet when they are so against taking care of human lives of people that already are here and are suffering. This conservative mentality needs to stop in our country. We need to move forward as a society and really take care of one another rather than clinging to out dated practices and beliefs that promote xenophobia, homophobia and sexism.

To quote one of my wife’s favorite shows, Star Trek; “The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few, or the one”. Now I’m no Treky but, one thing that show has correct is that they live in a universe where weapons no longer exist in civilian hands, racism as all been but obliterated, and the government actually takes care of its people. They’ve advanced in science because they removed the stupid restrictions thrust upon us by the religious leaders that still for some reason influence our government and, because of it, the majority live in a universe of peace. Let’s all work to get to Star Trek’s universe.

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