The Deadly Side…

…Of the attacks on LGBT and women’s rights.

This effects you, me, everyone, disease doesn’t care about politics.

The Trump administration have been misappropriating funding and the Republican Congress have been cutting funding to Title X for family planning and could increase STDs, cancer, and HIV/AIDS.

Trump's Redirection Of Family Planning Funds Could Undercut STD Fight
NPR
By Michelle Andrews
June 12, 2018

A Trump administration effort to shift family planning funding away from organizations that offer comprehensive reproductive health services, including abortion, could cripple federal efforts to stop a dramatic increase in sexually transmitted diseases in the U.S., some public health officials fear.

"This is the perfect storm, and it comes at absolutely the worst time," says Daniel Daltry, program chief of the HIV/AIDS, STD and Viral Hepatitis Program at the Vermont Department of Health.
[…]
This month, the Trump administration proposed new funding changes to the Title X program, which provides grants to programs in family planning, STD screening and breast and cervical cancer screening at nearly 4,000 sites nationwide. The program primarily serves low-income, young women, although a growing number of men also receive services at clinics that get Title X money.

Title X funds have never been permitted to be used for abortions. But the president and other Republicans have vowed to cut off all federal funding for Planned Parenthood and other organizations that provide abortions. President Trump's new rules, if adopted in their current form, would require that Title X services be physically and financially separate from abortion services.

Disease doesn’t take a vacation, doesn’t care about politics.

Growing homophobia will fuel the HIV epidemic, experts fear
CNN
By Meera Senthilingam
July 28, 2018

[…]
Since 2015, the Elton John AIDS Foundation has been enabling a $10 million fund in partnership with the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, to provide grants to organizations that meet the HIV-related needs of LGBT people but that themselves need help. One part of the fund is a rapid response grant that can get money to people in dire need within 72 hours.
[…]
"Our concern at the moment is that there is a shift towards the right," said Shaun Mellors, director of knowledge and influence at the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, who coordinates the Elton John Foundation's rapid response grants. "It's all bubbling up, and it's all increasing at the moment in a really scary way."
[…]
A recent report by Human Rights Watch went further and showed a link between crackdowns on LGBT people and HIV rates, finding that attacks, raids and an attitude of open hostility towards LGBT groups in Indonesia by authorities and Islamist militant groups has derailed public health efforts to prevent and curb new infections.
[…]
A study of gay men that was ongoing while the new law [Nigeria Same Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act of 2014] kicked in found "a substantial increase became virally unsuppressed [meaning the virus was not being controlled by drugs] and lost access to treatment," he said. "There, we could say we had a direct causality."

The study showed a 13% increase in fears of seeking health care and an 8% rise in avoiding health care. "These newly restricted laws were actually making the epidemic for gay men worse in that country," Beyrer said.

The Trump administration is trying to steal funding from Ryan White funds to pay for his immigration policy. POZ reported…

The Trump administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is preparing for a possible surge in child separations at the border, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) plans to budget for this by reallocating money from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, according to internal documents obtained and reported on by Slate magazine.

In fact, the process of transferring the HIV funds has already begun, Slate reports. The Ryan White program provides uninsured or underinsured people living with HIV access to medication and treatment.

And in another POZ article,

Earlier this week, Trump released his proposed budget for fiscal year 2019. As The AIDS Institute points out, the domestic cuts include:

• $58 million from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program
• $40 million from HIV programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• $26 million from AIDS housing programs

What’s more, despite a 300 percent increase in new cases of hepatitis C, which is a common coinfection among people with HIV, Trump’s suggested budget does not increase funding for the CDC’s viral hepatitis programs.

As I said disease doesn’t take a vacation and doesn’t care about politics, with the stealing of money from Ryan White, the cuts to funding which has happened now while there has been an increase in HIV/AIDS, STIs, and STDs is going to cause an epidemic in the diseases. At the same time Title X funding is being cut and new regulation requirements are being added way above what the Hyde Amendment requires causing women’s healthcare clinics to close which is going to be detrimental to women’s health with an increase in cancer such as breast cancer and other diseases like UTIs or Dysmenorrhea going undiagnosed or treated.

You might say this doesn’t concern me; I do not have risky sex.

But the thing is that diseases don’t stay in one population; HIV/AIDS is not a “Gay” disease, it is becoming a senior citizen disease and it is also increasing in the straight youth population… in other words it is making inroads into the general population.

This is going to be worse than the Regan era.