Ivanka Trump made an offer to Cecile Richards, the head of Planned Parenthood. The first daughter had pressed her father to say positive things about Planned Parenthood during the 2016 campaign, and now she had a proposal for the organization’s leader: What if Planned Parenthood split up, creating a small operation that ran abortion clinics and a larger one whose health clinics didn’t perform abortions? Then her father would call for increasing funding to the larger operation, instead of joining with congressional Republicans in their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood entirely.
.. It was indeed implausible to imagine that Richards would seriously consider Ivanka’s proposal. But as a political idea, a way of rethinking the whole Planned Parenthood debate, it reminded me of Ivanka’s father’s 2016 approach to many questions — the Trumpian habit of ignoring the ideological assumptions around an issue, and groping toward views that more Americans might be likely to support.
.. It implies that Richards’ organization performs, say, a few thousand abortions for high-risk pregnancies and rape victims annually, instead of the real number, which last year was 328,348 — dwarfing the number of prenatal care visits by a factor of more than 30.
.. Republicans often imply they would happily support Planned Parenthood if the organization wasn’t the nation’s largest abortion business. But this is misleading as well: Many religious conservatives would still object to funding contraceptives, and many small-government conservatives would oppose public health care spending, period.
.. So a politician who proposed to fund a large network of women’s health centers that offered contraceptives, H.I.V. tests, mammograms, prenatal care and adoption referrals, but absolutely no abortions, would run afoul of both the liberal commitment to abortion-as-a-positive-good and various conservative positions.
The Health Care Bill’s Insults to Women
The House bill eliminates the Affordable Care Act requirement that insurers cover certain essential services. Many of these services, like mammograms, birth control, and prenatal and maternity care, are used primarily by women. Women are more likely than men to use mental health care and prescription drugs, both of which are considered essential under the Affordable Care Act. If the requirement is scrapped, plans could choose not to offer such services. Plans that offer maternity care could become prohibitively expensive.
.. By cutting $880 million from Medicaid over 10 years, the House bill removes a crucial source of coverage for many women’s health services. Almost half of all births in the country, and 75 percent of publicly funded family planning services, are covered by Medicaid. Slashing Medicaid funds would be especially harmful to black and Latina women, who are more likely than white women to be insured through Medicaid.
.. The bill allows states to waive the requirement that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions without charging higher premiums.
.. many of the conditions that prompted insurers to deny coverage or raise premiums before the requirement was in place, including depression, lupus and multiple sclerosis, are more common in women. Some insurers also denied coverage or charged higher premiums to women who had given birth by C-section.
.. Mitch McConnell, initially convened a health care working group composed of 13 men and no women. Following widespread criticism, the group invited Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, to a meeting, but it is unclear whether she will become a regular member.
Hillary Clinton, Free to Speak Her Mind
She seemed relaxed and comfortable, much less guarded than during the campaign.
.. “Certainly misogyny played a role” in her loss, she said. “That just has to be admitted.”
.. She noted the abundant social science research that when men are ambitious and successful, they may be perceived as more likable. In contrast, for women in traditionally male fields, it’s a trade-off: The more successful or ambitious a woman is, the less likable she becomes
.. It’s not so much that people consciously oppose powerful women; it’s an unconscious bias.
.. Clinton noted that when she stepped down as secretary of state, she had an approval rating of 64 percent and was one of the most popular public officials in America.
.. two of the most important factors were the plunder and release of her campaign emails and the last-minute announcement by the F.B.I. director, James Comey, that the investigation into her use of a private email server could be reopened.
.. She grew particularly animated in describing what she called Trump’s “targeting of women.”
.. Asked about the infamous photo of Republican men discussing women’s health, Clinton described her favorite internet meme: a group of dogs around a conference table, with the caption, “today’s meeting on feline health care.”