Planned Parenthood is sounding the alarm over Bush's proposed 2009 budget--exposing the wholesale attack on family planning for the nation's neediest contained within. Planned Parenthood reports:

The president’s 2009 budget proposes cutting Medicaid funding for family planning by $570 million in FY 2009, and by $3.3 billion over five years. This would have a devastating effect on the millions of low-income women who rely on Medicaid for contraception and other preventive family planning services. The president's drastic proposal would do nothing more than increase the number of unintended pregnancies and the rate of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.

In addition, the president’s 2009 budget proposes to flat-fund America’s family planning program, despite the fact that Title X is drastically underfunded. Seventeen million women need publicly funded family planning services. Funding for the Title X family planning should be increased by $100 million in FY 09 to begin to fill this gap and meet the needs of the millions of women who need access to family planning services.

Despite exhaustive evidence revealing that prevention is working, Bush appears obligated to reward his Christian fundamentalist base (the only supporters he has left) by cutting contraceptive services and flat-funding Title X. There is no other explanation for slashing funding for services that have delivered so many successes, especially to those genuinely concerned with making abortion less necessary. According to the Guttmacher Institute in their report entitled "Title X: Three Decades of Accomplishment;"

Each year, Title X-supported clinics enable one million women to avoid unintended pregnancy, and women served at Title X-supported clinics have prevented almost 20 million pregnancies over the last two decades. Nine million of these pregnancies would have ended in abortion. The program has played a particularly important role in reducing pregnancies to teenagers. By helping to prevent 5.5 million adolescent pregnancies, Title X funded clinics have helped young women avoid more than two million births and a similar number of abortions over the last two decades. Without Title X, the number of teenage pregnancies would have been 20% higher than it was for this period.

In the dwindling days of his disastrous presidency, Bush is repaying the favors of those who enabled him to wreak havoc worldwide. Fittingly, his target are those least able to defend themselves. That's the classic technique of cowards and bullies.