Jeb Bush Says He's “Not Sure We Need Half A Billion Dollars For Women's Health Issues” 

Jeb Bush: “I'm Not Sure We Need Half A Billion Dollars For Women's Health Issues.” Speaking at the Southern Baptist Convention in Nashville, Jeb Bush said that he is “not sure we need half a billion dollars for women's health issues” during a discussion about defunding Planned Parenthood. Bush later released a statement attempting to clarify his statement claiming that he “misspoke” and was only talking about funding for Planned Parenthood. As reported by The New York Times:

During an interview on Tuesday with religious conservatives, Mr. Bush suggested that the federal government had overfunded women's health. 

“I'm not sure we need half a billion dollars for women's health issues,” Mr. Bush said at a Southern Baptist Convention event in Nashville. 

[..]

In a statement on Tuesday night, Mr. Bush sought to clarify his original wording: “With regards to women's health funding broadly, I misspoke, as there are countless community health centers, rural clinics, and other women's health organizations that need to be fully funded. They provide critical services to all, but particularly low-income women who don't have the access they need.” [The New York Times, 8/5/15] 

Joe Scarborough Defends Bush's Comments On Reproductive Health Funding

Scarborough: Jeb Was “Obviously” Just Talking About Planned Parenthood. Discussing Bush's comments on the August 5 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough defended the presidential candidate's remarks, claiming he “was talking obviously about Planned Parenthood.” Scarborough brushed off Bush's long history of rolling back reproductive health care access, instead asking, “why are we spending half a billion dollars on Planned Parenthood when we have all these rural clinics that are having to close their doors and can't serve women, or men, or children anymore?”: 

SCARBOROUGH: And Jeb was talking obviously about Planned Parenthood, 500, you know, half a billion dollars. I think Hillary overreached too, Kristen, when she said when you attack Planned Parenthood, you attack America. I think, because that's what you said. When you attack Planned Parenthood, you attack women's health, and when you attack women's health, you attack America's health. She's speaking for a very, I think, small section of the Democratic party when she equates America's health with Planned Parenthood. There are a lot of us, and there are many pro-choice people that I know, who scratch their heads and say okay why are we spending half a billion dollars on Planned Parenthood, when we have all these rural clinics that are having to close their doors and can't serve women, or men, or children anymore? [MSNBC, Morning Joe, 8/5/15]

But Bush's Terrible Record Reveals His True Stance On Reproductive Health And Rights

NARAL Gives Bush An “F” For His Record On Reproductive Rights. Citing Bush's efforts to restrict access to abortion services and his statements targeting the right to choose NARAL Pro-Choice America gave the presidential hopeful an “F” on his candidate report: 

Preserving Roe v. Wade and a Woman's Right to Choose

• Signed into a law a measure that criminalizes some abortion services, with no exception to protect a woman's health.¹
• Signed into law a measure designed to give new legal rights to a pregnancy, which are separate from the rights of the woman.²

Ensuring Access to Abortion Services

• Signed into law multiple TRAP measures that subject abortion providers to burdensome restrictions not applied to other medical professionals.³
• Signed into law measures that would require young women seeking abortion care to seek permission from their parents, even if they come from a violent, abusive, or neglectful home. Originally enacted in 1999⁴, a court found that the law violated minors' state constitutional privacy rights, and deemed it unenforceable.⁵ In response to the court's decision, the state legislature passed a resolution to amend the state constitution, which voters approved in 2004⁶. In 2005, the state legislature again passed the parental-notification law, which then-Gov. Bush signed.⁷
• Signed into law a measure establishing “choose life” license plates which allocate funding for anti-choice crisis pregnancy centers, many of which mislead, misinform, harass, and intimidate women.⁸ [NARAL, accessed on 8/5/15]

Bush's Medicaid Overhaul Reduced Access To Prenatal Care In Florida. Data shows that Bush's Medicaid overhaul in Florida, which established a semi-privatized health care system in the state, had significant consequences for pregnant women seeking care within their first trimester. As Bloomberg reported (emphasis added): 

In 2013, the latest year for which numbers are available, the plans taking part in Bush's reform program ranked below the national Medicaid average on 21 of the 32 quality indicators reported by the state. In some cases, those results were dramatically worse than in other states: 

-- Almost one-third of pregnant women got no care within their first trimester, and just 1 in 2 women had a postpartum visit between three and eight weeks after giving birth. Those figures put Florida in the bottom 25 percent of Medicaid ratings nationwide. [Bloomberg View, 3/16/15]

Bush Declined To Veto A “Scarlet Letter” Bill That Would Make Women Publish Their Sexual Histories. In 2001, the Florida legislature passed a bill that “amounted to forcing the mother to publish her sexual history in her hometown newspaper multiple times.” Although Bush had problems with parts of the bill, he declined to use his veto power to kill the legislation and let the bill passwithout signing it. Courts later ruled the law unconstitutional for being an invasion of privacy. According to Politifact:

The Legislature that year passed a bill that required single mothers who didn't know who was the father of their child publish a newspaper notice prior to putting the child up for adoption.

The notice had to run once a week for a month, and had to list a detailed description of all the possible fathers, plus dates and cities where a sexual encounter resulting in conception may have taken place. This was originally designed to alert the child's potential father the child was up for adoption, but amounted to forcing the mother to publish her sexual history in her hometown newspaper multiple times.

The bill passed the House and Senate by a wide margin. Bush objected to several parts of the bill in a letter to Secretary of State Katherine Harris -- the bill's own sponsor, Sen. Skip Campbell, D-Tamarac, lamented the final bill -- but instead of using his veto power to kill the legislation, Bush let the bill pass without signing it. [Politifact.com, 6/25/15] 

Bush Spent State Money On Deceptive Crisis Pregnancy Centers. During his tenure as governor of Florida, Bush funneled money to anti-choice initiatives such as deceptive crisispregnancy centers (CPCs) -- which have been exposed for “distributing medically inaccurate information” and “misleading women about the full range of their reproductive health options” -- through the sale of “Choose Life” license plates. Bush recently visited a CPC in South Carolina during a campaign stop and touted the money Florida funneled into the organizations under his leadership. [Salon, 4/14/15; Medium, 7/23/15]