If you want to see what womens health care in America will be like if Mitt Romney becomes president, just look at Texas and Arizona.

Both states are in the news for trying to prevent women from getting health care at Planned Parenthood. Its wrong and it will have devastating consequences for women for years to come, and Mitt Romney wants to do it in all 50 states.

Romney said in November he wants to eliminate the nations family-planning program, which was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970 and provides essential preventive health services to over 5 million people a year, the vast majority of whom are poor and uninsured. Beyond the millions of people who are helped by this health-care program, investing in family planning saves the government money. For every dollar spent on family planning, experts say taxpayers save around $4.

Romney said in March that, if elected president, he would get rid of Planned Parenthood. He clarified his remarks to say he would end federal funding for Planned Parenthood.

This isnt about abortion. These health-care programs provide blood pressure and cholesterol monitoring, flu shots, breast-cancer screenings, Pap tests and birth control.

Michele Azzaro knows what Mitt Romneys America would look like because shes already experiencing it in Texas. Michelle has been a Planned Parenthood patient in Dallas for more than 20 years. Planned Parenthood was there when she had a breast-cancer scare, and her local health center has been there when she needs her yearly cholesterol test.

Last year, Texas drastically cut its family planning funding, the same way Mitt Romney says he would cut federal funding. Michele lost access to annual breast screenings and the birth-control pills she needs to manage her painful uterine fibroids.

She isnt alone. An estimated 160,000 women lost their health care when Texas slashed its family planning program last year. Now, the state is trying to throw another 100,000 women off health care by taking Planned Parenthood out of the Medicaid-supported Womens Health Program. Planned Parenthood health centers provide care to fully 40 percent of women in the program.

Texas program provides low-income, working women with lifesaving cancer screenings, well-woman exams, contraception, screening for diabetes and high blood pressure, and testing for sexually transmitted infections. The program was sponsored and implemented by Republicans less than a decade ago, an indication of how far to the right some in the party have gone in just a few years.

Planned Parenthood sued the state in federal court in order to continue providing these critical health services to women, and on Friday a federal appeals court blocked the states effort to deny women the health care they rely on at Planned Parenthood while the lawsuit proceeds. Meanwhile, Gov. Jan Brewer signed legislation that cuts state funding for Planned Parenthoods preventive care.

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