Title X: One Last Time

I have been fulminating about gender discrimination in Title X because I have been listening to all of the discussion about “making sure that women have access to health.” I even went to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services web site and read up on it.

The Title X Family Planning program ["Population Research and Voluntary Family Planning Programs" (Public Law 91-572)], was enacted in 1970 as Title X of the Public Health Service Act. Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning and related preventive health services. The Title X program is designed to provide access to contraceptive services, supplies and information to all who want and need them. By law, priority is given to persons from low-income families.

Do you see any reference to “women” in that? I feel like an idiot.

We do have services to provide testing for men, and we have them on an equal basis with women, and they are provided by Title X, and Planned Parenthood does offer those services to men on the same basis that it offers them to women.

I have been listening to the word “women” from so many newspersons, pundits and politicians that when I went to this site and read the description, when I read the word “person” I saw the word “woman.” I allowed the idiots screaming at me on the television and in print to brainwash me completely. I am utterly appalled that I allowed that to happen to me. The words are right there in black and white and I missed them.

So why, in defense of Title X and Planned Parenthood, are these people defending it by using the rhetoric of defending “women’s health” in such specific language? Are they so stupid that they do not know that Title X is not gender specific? I can, perhaps, be excused for that; I had never even heard of it until I was told that “women’s health was being threatened,” but these are legislators and the like. Are they deliberately being dishonest to serve some agenda? Why have they been using “women’s health” instead of “a program that serves people in need of health services they cannot afford” in defense of Title X?

Of course if we were a civilized country, like France or Canada for instance, we wouldn’t need Title X because we would have universal health care.