Reply to a Colleague's Blog

In her blog post titled "The Defunding of Planned Parenthood", Reanne Becerra made some valid points about a recent Senate vote to allow states to block Federal funding from going to Planned Parenthood. Mike Pence broke the tie in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood. 

If only Mike Pence could have known about the unintended consequences of stripping funding from Planned Parenthood… Oh yeah, when Mike Pence was Governor of Indiana he defunded Planned Parenthood. In many rural counties Planned Parenthood was the only clinic that did STD testing.  In the following years many of these counties had an epidemic rise in HIV and syphilis. The HIV outbreak was escalated by Governor Pence’s moral objection to needle exchange programs for intravenous drug users. Pence incorrectly believed that if drug addicts didn’t have clean needles they would simply choose not to inject drugs. The result was the biggest HIV outbreak in Indiana’s history. Not only were the drug users sharing dirty needles but with Planned Parenthood shut down many of them no longer had access to HIV testing.