Four Republican women in competitive election races suddenly plan to break ranks with Gov. Chris Christie and vote to restore funding for women's health care.



This has nothing to do with the challenges they face in November, they say. Don't be cynical.

It just took almost 8 years, a governor with a 15 percent approval rating and an embarrassing episode on the beach to grow a spine, apparently.



Of course, this money will be restored in six months anyway, if gubernatorial frontrunner Phil Murphy takes office. The day after he won the primary, he announced he'd replenish the $7.5 million in annual state funding for family planning clinics that Christie cut.

Christie faces rebellion from 5 Republican lawmakers over Planned Parenthood funding



So put us in Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto's camp of "too little, too late." After denying this problem for years and refusing to stand up to the governor, now Republican women care?



In the meantime, New Jersey saw a spike in gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, breast and cervical cancer cases, and tens of thousands of women stopped getting treatment.

Nationally, STDs are on the rise. But New Jersey's 35 percent increase since Christie's cut predated that bump. And in 11 out of 21 counties, the increase was 50 percent or higher.



The least we could have done was make screenings more available. Yet these women apparently weren't picked up by other providers, as Republicans had promised they would be. The year after Christie's cuts, family planning providers statewide saw 33,000 fewer patients - a 24 percent drop.



If Republicans had taken this stand years ago, how many women might have been saved?

Top Democrat mocks GOP lawmakers breaking with Christie on Planned Parenthood



The Legislature has been trying to override Christie on this since he first took office. Where were you, Holly Schepisi (R-Bergen), Maria Rodriguez-Gregg (R-Burlington), Nancy F. Munoz (R-Union) and Amy Handlin (R-Monmouth)?



Suddenly, they've seen the light, which they claim is only because of uncertainty over what Congress will do with Medicaid. That's just phony. These cuts did real harm to low-income women, long before Congress started discussing the repeal of Obamacare.



Schepisi complains that her prior lack of support for funding family planning clinics is now being weaponized against her, even though - remember -this has nothing to do with the election. She says Planned Parenthood should have just reallocated funding to make up for Christie's cut, or our democratic senators should have stepped in to save the day with federal money.



She is blaming them for her failure to stand up to the governor. Priceless. She also accuses Democrats of manufacturing a women's health crisis so they could "falsely attack the Republican women in our caucus," adding, "We are not being targeted because of those votes. We are being targeted because we are women."



Really? If this program is so meaningless, why is she supporting it now?



As Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, the bill's perennial sponsor in the Senate, put it: "The governor's the one who manufactured a women's health crisis - and all his enablers are the ones who let it happen."



Enablers like Handlin, who now speaks of the vital importance of "safety net services." She says she opposed restoring funding for STD and cancer screenings before because "there was enough redundancy" to provide them elsewhere.



Of the thousands of women who went without treatment or the surge in cancer and STDs, she says: "None of us can prove cause and effect in any of these situations." Right. And we can't prove that Republicans now care because they are running for re-election. Life is full of little mysteries.

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