Meanwhile, Back on Planet Earth...

While the collection of dipshits, miscreants, scoundrels, and unicornesque incorruptible civil servants we call a Congress are busily fighting over how most effectively to reduce women's access to abortion and other basic healthcare services, a new study by our good friends at the Guttmacher Institute has found:

Publicly funded family planning providers are struggling to meet a growing need for subsidized contraceptive care, which is being driven by more women wanting to postpone childbearing during tough economic times. This surge in demand is straining already-limited resources, and is exacerbated by rising unemployment that has resulted in more women losing employer-based insurance coverage, according to [pdf] "A Real-Time Look at the Impact of the Recession on Publicly Funded Family Planning Centers," based on a new survey by the Guttmacher Institute.

Two-thirds of the responding centers reported an increase in the number of clients seeking contraceptive services between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009, and more than four in five reported an increase in the number of clients who are poor or low-income and therefore eligible for free or reduced-fee care. In addition, nearly two-thirds reported a decline in the number of clients who are able to pay the full fee for services.

"The recession has put many women in an untenable situation. They want to avoid unintended pregnancies more than ever, but are having trouble affording the contraceptive services they need to do so," says Dr. Sharon Camp, Guttmacher president and CEO. "The very providers these women turn to in times of crisis are themselves struggling to make ends meet. It is time to bolster the nation's family planning system to help women avoid unintended pregnancies and the unplanned births and abortions that would result."

It doesn't get any easier than this: We need to fund family planning providers and give women real reproductive choices. Whether you're totally anti-abortion, or a rampaging steampunk abortion robot, or anywhere in between, funding family planning providers makes sense. Pro-life, pro-choice, conservative, progressive, anti-SCHIP, pro-SCHIP, pro-bootstraps, pro-safety net, whatthefuckever, making as many resources as possible available to women (and families) to manage their reproduction should be objective number one.

The only reason to not be on board with this is being a misogynist asshole.

And everyone claims they don't waves that flag. So what's the goddamn hold-up...?

That is, of course, a rhetorical question.