ISIS and the far-right in America aren’t that similar at all, are they?
Wrong. Because both are now trying to clamp down on women’s rights to healthcare.
You see, in America, Republicans are looking to clamp down on Planned Parenthood, after dodgy footage filmed by anti-choicers went viral. The video appears to show a Planned Parenthood representative talking about selling foetal tissue for profit, something that would be illegal.
Planned Parenthood offers affordable healthcare to both men and women across America, such as educational programmes, HIV and STI tests, pap tests, breast exams and contraception. In fact, only 3% of their services are abortions. But the Republicans have still sought to remove federal funding from the institution while it is investigated by a government committee.
This means women – and men – looking for sexual healthcare might have a pretty tough time ahead should Planned Parenthood be forced to cut resources.
And in the lead up to the Republican elections for its presidential candidate, Ben Carson, an actual doctor who believes all abortion is wrong, even in the case of incest or rape, is taking the lead ahead of Donald Trump.
What’s this got to do with ISIS? Well, ISIS has just ruled that male doctors cannot treat women at all. The terrorist group, which has declared itself a caliphate, has demanded that men and women who are unrelated (or not married) do not interact with each other.
The lack of female doctors in the area means that women – so many of them raped and assaulted – are not getting the healthcare they need. This is according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, reports The Mirror.
READ MORE: Woman Breaks Up Anti-Abortion Protest By Shouting Out ‘Yeast Infections!’
Abortion in Syria has been illegal since 1949, and penalties are reduced if it was done to ‘save the woman’s honour’, but as for basic medical care for women via male gynaecologists? It’s not happening.
The American right can bang on about terrorism and the threat from overseas as a way of propping up their own ideas about outsiders, especially average Muslims (who have about as much to do with ISIS as the average Christian has to do with the Ku Klux Klan), but when they too are refusing people necessary healthcare, and women access to simple health screenings, it should be an abrupt wake-up call.
Like, if any of your policies match those of ISIS, it’s probably a clear indication they’re awful policies and that it’s time to drop them altogether.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.