Mitch Perry
Back in May, North Florida Democratic Rep. Gwen Graham joined more than 120 colleagues in the House, calling for Speaker Paul Ryan to hold a vote on President Obama’s $1.9 billion emergency appropriations request to fight the spread of Zika. Three months later, she was at it again, this time accompanied by officials with Planned Parenthood Votes, a super PAC aligned with Planned Parenthood.
“This is not the time to be playing partisan politics,” Graham said in a conference call held Thursday. “This is a time for us to do our job, and bring a clean bill forward so we can find additional resources.”
In late June, Senate Democrats rejected a request for $1.1 billion in Zika funding because of what they said were “poison pills” inserted in the measure. Specifically, they opposed a provision easing Environmental Protection Agency regulations, as well as a measure that would have prevented funding for Planned Parenthood. Instead it would go to other community health centers.
Graham said she recently — and reluctantly — requested that the Department of Health & Human Services divert funds from other vaccine production activities so that they could fund more Zika research.
While Graham, a noted centrist, didn’t criticize any Republicans in her remarks, that was not the case with Dawn Laguens, head of Planned Parenthood Votes.
“The Centers for Disease Control says that family planning is the primary strategy for reducing Zika-related pregnancy complications, yet instead of centering on women’s health, Marco Rubio and the Republican leadership have worked to gut family planning and women’s health care for years, including efforts to destroy the frontline providers like a Planned Parenthood, that are needed to do this work today,” Laguens said, adding that Rick Scott has been leading a “crusade” against women’s access to health care since the day he entered office.
“These politicians have worse than no plan. Their plans are making things worse,” Laguens added. “You cannot have a Zika strategy that focuses on mosquitoes, but not women and families.”
The Zika virus can be transmitted through a mosquito bite or from sexual contact with an infected person of either gender. The virus can cause serious birth defects, including microcephaly, where babies are born with abnormally small heads and brains.
Earlier this month, Sen. Rubio said pregnant women who have contracted the Zika virus should not have access to abortions.
“We need to respect each women’s ability and right to make decisions about whether or not to have a child, and she needs to be able to make this decision in accordance with her own feelings, her family, those feelings of faith she may have, and with her doctor,” said Laguens. “But Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and Donald Trump have no place in that decision.”
