IF YOU DEFUND IT, THEY WON’T COME
What happened when Iowa Republicans blocked money for women’s reproductive health care
WHEN PHOEBE MCNEECE showed up at the community health center in a small town in southeast Iowa in 2012, the last thing she wanted to hear was that she was pregnant. Uninsured, struggling to keep her job, and behind on her mortgage, she was becoming increasingly anxious and depressed. When she met with the doctor, she hoped he’d tell her that the home pregnancy test she had taken was a false positive.
Instead, he congratulated her. McNeece broke down.
“Stop crying, stop crying,” she remembers him saying, his hand on her shoulder. “This is a good thing. This is what you were put on Earth to do.” In that moment, she thought, “I’m an incubator now instead of my own person.”
McNeece went through with the pregnancy,
