All alliteration aside, Governor Rick Perry has overstepped the legal boundaries of allocating federal funding to women’s health in Texas.

In politics, if you are passionate about eliminating a federally funded program, the way to kill it is to stop the funding.

Gov. Perry’s stint to limit women’s access to abortions in the state of Texas led him to sign into law the elimination of funding to Planned Parenthood.

He did so simply because of a specific service that is provided at some Planned Parenthood locations (i.e., abortions).

Perry seemed to have little concern over the fact that the majority of services provided at a Planned Parenthood clinic consist of routine health screenings, and that Planned Parenthood goes to meticulous measures to ensure that federal funds do not pay for any abortions.

This is due to a constitutional law that prohibits federal funding to be spent on abortions called the Hyde Amendment.

Perry decided to cut the funding to all Planned Parenthood clinics in the state to prove a point: Rick Perry doesn’t want women in Texas to have access to health care clinics because a woman might seek to have the clinic perform an abortion.

Unfortunately for Perry, it turns out that the federal government does not want states to decide which clinics are acceptable for treating patients.

This is clear when viewed from a federal level; if states could decide what clinics are acceptable and which are not acceptable, by arbitrary means, then patients would not have the fair access to care that is sufficient for their health care needs.

The federal laws for Medicaid funding are spelled out; if the state sends funds to federally acceptable clinics, then the state receives the allocated funding.

If the state does not send allocated funding to federally approved clinics, then the state will not receive the funding.

What is interesting in this situation is that Medicaid is provided to low-income citizens, who are particularly vulnerable due to their strained economic resources.

Eliminating funding to clinics is causing clinics to close around the state, therefore increasing patient volume at open clinics. Thousands of women will have to relocate clinics for their health care, which could cause more problems in the long-run.

Why would Governor Perry want to limit access to a group of people who are already struggling? The answer is simple: he must not care about women, especially if they are poor.

Let us approach Perry’s decision through the ethical evaluation of justice. Philosopher John Rawls wrote A Theory of Justice, which is applicable in this situation for two reasons.

First, Rawls supposes that after forming a social contract (a social agreement to reduce some liberties in order to uphold rights of citizens), we ought to come together as a society and ask how we should form laws at the original position.

Second, Rawls gives us the thought experiment of the original position, where behind a veil of ignorance we are to evaluate laws and actions.

The veil of ignorance is an objective state, where we are not influenced by our personal biases.

We do not know if we are rich or poor, republican or democrat, intelligent or ignorant; none of those qualities should impact our laws.

Rawls insist that justice is fairness. Even though different levels of abilities vary from person to person, we should only pursue actions that benefit the least fortunate in society, so every member of society can benefit from the laws.

Applying this theory to the Perry problem, we see instantly that denying funding to Planned Parenthood in the State of Texas will negatively impact the worst-off in our state.

The women seeking health care services have the right to choose which clinics to go to or not to go to, based on personal influences like location, transportation, hours of operation, personal beliefs, etc.

The state should not impose additional hurdles for these women to overcome in order to have access to health care.

It is unjust.

What if defunding Planned Parenthood means that a woman in Dallas has to travel further in order to get a blood sugar test?

Let’s suppose the closest Planned Parenthood clinic was two miles away from her apartment, but it has shut down due to lack of funding because of Gov. Perry.

Now she must to travel ten miles away to the nearest Perry-approved clinic. What if she didn’t have personal transportation?

What if the DART system could not drop her off near the new clinic?

Even if she managed to make it to the Perry-approved clinic, what if the waiting list was too long for her to wait?

Let’s suppose in waiting for her appointment at the Perry-approved clinic that she develops type II diabetes.

Has this helped her have better access to health care?

Certainly not.

Has this benefited her?

Certainly not.

Is she alone?

Certainly not.

There are thousands of women in the State of Texas who will have similar situations to this – only not developing type II diabetes, but breast cancer progressing into endocrine systems, or contracting and spreading sexually transmitted diseases, not knowing they were infected, or many other illnesses that could be treated with proper access to health care.

To qualify for Medicaid coverage a woman must not only earn less than the poverty level, but must also be either: a mother of a child under the age of 18, pregnant, 65 years old or older, or have a disability.

Some of the services most women receive from clinics funded by Medicaid are annual gynecological exams, blood work for health information like blood-sugar levels and cholesterol readings, and even important cancer screenings.

If the program is already difficult enough to access in the first place, why is the State of Texas putting up more barriers to keep women from entering?

Gov. Rick Perry and the Republicans who signed this bill into law in Texas should be ashamed of themselves.

It seems that through their ignorance of the federal policy, more women will suffer the consequences of the state’s poor budgeting and poor planning. Clinics across the state are closing, which means two things: unemployment is rising due to clinics being shut down, and more women now have less access to important health care services. This in turn means that more Texans are in a vulnerable economic state, and that we have put an unjust law into place that harms the most vulnerable citizens of our state.

What does this mean to people living in Texas?

Locally, the Dallas hospitals providing healthcare to people without insurance will become even more over-crowded.

For example, Parkland Hospital is already over-burdened as a healthcare provider, and clinics in the area will with close because of the lack of funding.

The remaining clinics will be overbooked due to closing clinics. If the goal of the new Texas law was to try to shut down Planned Parenthood, its result was to limit access to medical care for many Texas women.

What will happen to our state if we continue to cut funding and run programs on bare-bone budgets?

Texas has reduced many important public services.

By cutting library hours and education funding, and eliminating access to federal funding for women’s health services, the State of Texas is hurting its most vulnerable citizens.

Until we have a governor who not only stands up for justice and human rights, but also understands the federal laws, then all citizens of Texans will suffer a lower quality of life.

Rachel is a senior majoring in philosophy and psychology. 

(Associated Press)

(Associated Press)