Clouding Title X

I think I’m back to having a little trouble with Title X again. Chris Matthews had Barbara Boxer and Chris Coons, two Democratic Senators, on to talk about the issue yesterday. Boxer is certainly a blathering jackass, but she is by no means stupid, and she was talking about Planned Parenthood delivering “blood pressure checks and diabetes testing.” She even repeated the claim a second time. What does that have to do with “reproductive health” services? Chris Coons was doing fine until he finished, “…more than anything make sure that women have access to health.”

Harry Reid, who is even more of a blathering jackass than Boxer, said on the floor of the Senate that, “They are asking me to sacrifice my wife’s health, my daughter’s health, and my granddaughters’ health.” What the hell is this wealthy jerk’s family doing enrolled in a program for poor people?

Debbie Stabenow, Senator from Michigan, was on Last Word and was talking about Planned Parenthood providing “blood pressure checks and breast cancer screenings.” Lawrence O’Donnell read an email from a friend who described the mammograms she had received at no cost to herself.

I’m all in favor of every person in this country receiving health care, preferably at no cost. I also understand that women need things that men do not, specifically birth control and abortion, and I’m certainly in favor of those things being provided on a gender specific basis.

But both men and women get cancer; why do women get free screening for breast cancer and men have no place to get screened for testicular or prostate cancer? Both men and women are subject to catching STD’s; why do women have a place to get free testing for them and men do not?

Yeah, I know the concept than men are the villains who give the STD’s to women, not ever the victims who catch them from women. I know, it is the man’s responsibility to wear a condom, and if he does not then he deserves whatever fate accrues to him for not doing so.

What about the poor young lad whose parents or church, or even whose school’s “abstinence only” sex education program, told him that the very act of carrying a condom with him is evil, and who got caught in a moment where things got out of control?

And I do not believe that even if it was pure carelessness, the STD should remain uncaught and lead to a man being crippled or dead because society did not care enough to provide testing except on a gender specific basis.

Testicular cancer is not as frequent as breast cancer, but it still kills in a particularly dreadful way, and we don’t have any color that NFL football teams wear for that disease, we don’t hold a 6-mile walk even once a year for it, let alone a 60-mile walk three times per year, and we don’t have a Title X to find it before it’s to late to treat it.

Title X is a good thing and we should fund it, I would never say that women should not receive a benefit just because men don’t. That doesn’t mean that I don’t have a bit of a problem with it.

“…more than anything make sure that women have access to health.”

Sure, but why not men?