Democrats are considering dropping family planning benefits from the latest stimulus package to appease Republicans who are against it. The drop comes after a personal appeal from Barack Obama to do so–as his administration is trying to get Republicans on their side.

While I admire Obama’s efforts to run a bi-partisan administration and to actually accomplish things this breaks my heart and angers me.  For some reason the importance of allowing women access to cheap birth control is always being downplayed and it keeps getting more and more expensive for women to acquire it. It enrages me that the Republicans, who use abortion to gain votes and energize their base, are against family planning.  If you want to cut down on abortions, you need to give women the resources to prevent those pregnancies.

As someone who currently receives family planning benefits, I know firsthand how beneficial they can be.  Without my benefits I would have to fork over close to 70 dollars a month to get my birth control.   That’s a lot of money if you are struggling to feed yourself or your family.  Even for me, that 70 dollars means that I can eat better (more fresh foods instead of cheaper processed things) and that I can spend more time involved in causes I care about instead of at a part time job I don’t like (and probably couldn’t even find today).

And in response to claims that family planning benefits won’t stimulate our economy I can’t help but wonder whether they’ve thought about the impact that more babies will have on our lower income citizens - unless of course they’re hoping that all those women who lose their benefits simply get abortions?

*photo from cdedbdme’s flickr account (creative commons)