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Welcome, readers, to the Good Men Project Daily Brief!
Today the news is dominated by yet another school shooting, this time in Sante Fe, Texas. As of this writing, at least one suspect has been taken into custody in the attack that has left not less than 10 dead, another has been “detained”. This writer has a personal policy of not covering school shootings, as I believe that the notoriety is the goal and I refuse to help them achieve that. There are plenty of outlets covering that story.
Since these headlines are destined to drop down to the bottom of the ever-changing news cycle, I wanted to draw your attention to the most recent attempts by President Trump’s Administration to use women’s health to gain applause from his base, treating women like a game of Jenga, knocking pieces from their equality of opportunity block by block until it crumbles to the ground.
One could almost imagine the mental balance sheet of moving to limit access to women’s health one day after confirming the first woman to become Director of the CIA. So go on, take it. Take another little piece… you know you want to if it makes you feel good.
My name is Mckay Williams and this is your Daily Brief:
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Trump Administration Moves to Backdoor Defund Planned Parenthood… again.
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I’m in my mid-thirties now, and in my time on this planet I’ve interacted with a woman or two. There’s a lot of them, and depending on where you live, they could even outnumber you! I hate to keep dropping bombshells here, but there are a lot of things women’s bodies do to them that is different from men’s bodies, and with that comes the need for specialized medical care.
There’s a great misunderstanding in the country about Planned Parenthood’s role in women’s health, which I talked about in one of my first articles here at The Good Men Project, and I was personally shocked at how many men don’t understand that abortion is a very small part of what they do. However, no matter how much education, materials, and PR campaigns around their services are created and made accessible, people seem to hear Planned Parenthood and go on a capslock crusade protecting the unborn children.
These changes to Title X bar any federal funds from going to any outlet who will perform an abortion. There’s a too often perpetuated myth by some in Congress that 97% of PP’s services are abortions. The truth is, the best estimates put that number closer to 12%, and even that number is possibly higher than it actually is. But you know… take another little piece, because poor women don’t deserve healthcare.
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Why Are Groups Like Planned Parenthood Important? Apparently Some Men Don’t Know the Difference Between HIV and HPV.
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Chris Hayes got a hold of a video last night in which Bill Gates talks about meeting Citizen Trump while working to promote the Gates’ Foundation’s PATH program which works to end the Human Papillomavirus (HPV), which is a sexually transmitted virus that can often times lead to cervical cancer in women. Men can be asymptomatic carriers, which just means that they get it without any symptoms that could clue you into knowing you are infected. This makes it extraordinarily easy to pass on.
In the video, Gates claims that Citizen Trump was confused about the difference between HPV and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), a virus that can lead to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). He also claims that the second time he met Mr. Trump, he was still confused.
So what’s the big deal? For one, it concerns this writer that the President of the United States gets tripped up by something that was pretty easily explained to me in 8th grade, but secondly, it shows that he doesn’t really care to know the difference between a disease that predominately kills underserved people like addicts, homeless youth, and the LGBT community with a disease that almost exclusively kills women.
Bill Gates also claimed that Mr. Trump made comments about the physical appearance of Mr. Gates’ daughters, which leads me to wager a guess he’s pretty up to date on erectile dysfunction medicines, though. So there’s that.
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First Lady Melania Trump Still Hospitalized. Thank Goodness She Doesn’t Need to Rely on Planned Parenthood.
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The reason I included this story was not a commentary on Madam First Lady’s health or to explore any conspiracy theories surrounding why she’s still in the hospital days after a procedure medical pundits have explained to be fairly routine.
I highlight this story to point out that Ms. Trump, would she not be Ms. Trump, would be Ms. Knavs, an aging Slovakian immigrant and part-time model in New York City. As I’ll take any opportunity to humblebrag for my friends, I happen to know some part-time models in New York City and it’s an expensive life that doesn’t leave a lot of financial room for medical emergencies.
It’s a good thing that Ms. Trump has access to the best healthcare our country has to offer and I absolutely wish her the quickest of recoveries possible.
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Young Women are the Future: Exhibit 938,372
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This isn’t a story from today, but it was brought to my attention by reader Amora B.
While we slowly strip the equality of opportunity from women’s health, are reminded of the explicit and implicit racism that people of color face in this country, and watch helplessly as young students’ incredible activism is faced with yet another school shooting, it is important to me to highlight the reasons why all of this is important.
So here’s a story about a 12 year old girl named Marley Dias, who was frustrated with her lack of access to stories she can identify with at school. Instead of allowing failures in the system to just exist, she did something about it.
Read this story, because the only thing I know for certain is that when all the pieces of you have been stripped, when the Jenga tower finally falls, the only thing you can do is build something better. This kid is doing something… are you?
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Click for more from Mckay Williams
Click for more from Mckay Williams
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