The House has passed an amendment that would withdraw federal funding from health centers that teach abortion techniques. The sponsor of this proposal, Rep. Virginia Foxx, who previously asserted that the hate crime murder of Matthew Shepard was just a “hoax,” doesn’t think taxpayer dollars should be spent teaching health care providers to perform abortions, but at what cost?

Recent Guttmacher Institute research has shown that from 2000 to 2008, while most groups of women had a decline in abortion rates, poor women’s abortion rates were rising. "That abortion is becoming increasingly concentrated among poor women suggests the need for better contraceptive access and family planning counseling. It certainly appears these women are being underserved," says study author Rachel K. Jones. "Antiabortion restrictions and cuts to publicly funded family planning services disproportionately affect poor women, making it even more difficult for them to gain access to the contraceptive and abortion services they need."

Foxx’s proposal amends a bill to put funding restrictions on President Obama’s health care reform law, scaling back funding to graduate-level health care education. The provision would provide an extra hurdle standing between low-income women and health care services. If women who are struggling financially having difficulty now, imagine the complications they’d face if their doctors have had an incomplete medical training. And if keeping doctors in the dark isn’t a women’s health risk, we don’t know what is.