Rep. Chris Taylor, D-Madison, recently released an op-ed to the Capital Times in which she connects an attack on Planned Parenthood to an attack on women. Though gutting funding for Planned Parenthood would be a blow to women’s health, I don’t agree that this legislation would signal a continuation of the war on women.

Taylor references a bill that deals with federal reimbursements to organizations that provide prescriptions for tuberculosis or any STD. It forces places that provide abortions, like Planned Parenthood, to pay full price for these prescriptions. Taylor believes that this bill “will make it more difficult and expensive for health centers to provide birth control and other prescription medication to Wisconsin’s women.”

This would be true, but this bill deals with money Wisconsin doesn’t control.

Therefore, the bill won’t do anything. States don’t have control over reimbursements of federal money. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services would have to approve what the state plans to do with Planned Parenthood.

The state is completely wasting its time with this bill. The only reason for such actions is to score political points.

In light of the extremely edited videos insinuating Planned Parenthood was selling fetal tissue for profit, Republicans are looking to score political points and future donations from groups like Pro-Life Wisconsin, Wisconsin Catholic Conference and Wisconsin Family Action.

Of course, no political point scoring event would be complete without the outrage from the opposition. That’s where Taylor comes in. She claims to be defending women’s rights when she probably knows this bill will do absolutely nothing.

I’d rather have my politician show outrage for something that will severely impact Planned Parenthood and the well-being of all people, like the proposed fetal tissue ban, than use a dead issue to score political points.

Aaron Reilly ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in comparative literature and Russian.