The Female Face Behind the Senate’s Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood.

Joni Ernst is the public face behind GOP effort in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood in reaction to the controversial videos released over the past few weeks. But how would this bill, if passed, affect her home state of Iowa? (Photo: Getty Images)

Joni Ernst, the junior senator from Iowa, first burst onto the public scene in March 2014 during her campaign for retiring Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. A state senator at the time, she quickly gained national attention for a TV ad in which she explained to Iowa voters, “I grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, so when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork.”

Ernst smiles casually while saying this, with an image of pigs running in the background. “Washington’s full of big spenders,” she says at the end of the video. “Let’s make ’em squeal.”

Now, Ernst, R-Iowa, has become the public face of the GOP effort in the Senate to defund Planned Parenthood in reaction to the controversial videos released over the past few weeks by the antiabortion activist group Center for Medical Progress — an anti-abortion groupwhich alleges that Planned Parenthood is profiting from the sale of fetal tissue donation.

The bill will be debated by the Senate on Monday, with a vote coming as early as this evening.

While fetal tissue donation is a long-standing and legal component of American medical research, many Republicans, like Ernst, are using the videos as the latest battle cry of many in the party’s opposition of abortion.

The Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood would end all federal funding through Title X to Planned Parenthood affiliate clinics nationwide — money specifically restricted from funding abortion services and used for some of the most successful government-funded programs nationwide. Title X is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning services and related reproductive health services. Ninety percent of the people Title X serves have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and 63 percent are uninsured. Six in 10 women who access health care services from a Title X-funded health center consider this their main source of health care.

Funded at $286 million for fiscal year 2015, Title X provides huge savings to the American taxpayers. For every public dollar invested in family planning, the American taxpayer saves approximately $7 in Medicaid-related costs. Nearly half of all births in the U.S. are paid for by Medicaid, the health care program for low-income families and individuals; the average national cost for one Medicaid-covered birth is $12,770. This is a stark contrast to the $239 per-client cost of publicly funded contraceptive care through Title X family planning. It is estimated, then, that Title X saves taxpayers nearly $7 billion a year.

source yahoo health