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We Need a Plan B For Planned Parenthood
The more I learn about the Planned Parenthood videos, the more convinced I am that outrage surrounding them was entirely morally justified. All of us — even those who are somewhat pro-choice — should be horrified by doctors callously considering how to adjust abortion techniques, weighing all the variables except those pertaining to the fetus’ suffering. We should be further outraged that Planned Parenthood seems, quite plainly, to be violating federal laws by doing their damnedest to get the best price they can for fetal organs rather than simply asking for compensation for the costs of storage and transfer. Imagine, if you will, the public outcry that would follow the release of video of veterinarians speaking about euthanizing dogs or cats in such a way and for such a purpose.
That same reflection, however, has also led me to the conclusion that the GOP’s failed attempt to defund Planned Parenthood was tactically unsound from the start. The first and most obvious objection was that we never had the votes to overcome a presidential veto. At most this would have been a Pyrrhic victory that would have evaporated as soon as the bill reached the Oval Office.
Even if the votes had been there, however, I fear that the measure would have backfired — because we failed to understand how the public would perceive the effort. To begin with, the “funding” matter is a little complicated, as Planned Parenthood receives only a negligible amount of direct funding. According to the Wall Street Journal, the overwhelming majority of the $528 million Planned Parenthood receives comes in the form of Medicaid reimbursements for services provided. Moreover, federal law bars reimbursement for abortions. As much as we might (rightfully) argue that money is fungible and that it’s wrong for public funding to be used for non-essential programs that a large percentage of the population believes to be murder, these matters take too much explanation and lack the simplicity and emotional punch of “Your money isn’t being used to fund abortion. Quit complaining.”
The second, related problem is that Planned Parenthood has — evil geniuses that they are — made their name synonymous with the cause of “women’s health” and presented abortion as a small-but-no-less-sacred article of faith for that cause. As such, you can’t attack Planned Parenthood’s abortion practices without attacking the cause of women’s health itself. Rightly or wrongly — the latter, if you ask me — this plays directly into the War on Women narrative (as Jeb Bush discovered just yesterday) and quickly morphs into cries that those nasty, mean, white, puritanical Republican dudes are going to take away your access to contraceptives. And that’s just close enough to the truth to work.
So what can we do, apart from rolling over and giving up? The first and most obvious answer, I think, is to call for congressional hearings. Congress has a nearly unlimited power to subpoena testimony: why not haul Drs. Nucatola, Gatter, and Farrell, et al in front of Senators Rand Paul, Bill Cassidy, John Barrasso, all of whom are pro-life MDs as well some of the body’s best pro-life advocates (make sure to include Joni Enrst so the inevitable War on Women cries at least take some work). Make them answer questions under oath about possible crimes they may have committed, without the benefit of editing.
We lost the first fight on this. Let’s win the next.
Published in Culture, General
By the way, I forgot to say it. I support drawing a veto from the president. Put everyone on record as to where they stand.
I like the hearing strategy. I’m OK with the GOP forcing a veto, but a series of hearings over time would be the best approach.
Doing nothing until after a 2016 is not a winning option. There won’t have been a consensus built without consistent pressure on PP and its media allies.
The single easiest thing we could do is return to the requirement of an actual speaking filibuster in the Senate. Doing so would improve our position on a whole host of issues.
First step is to start reclaiming the language. Reid actually said on the floor of the Senate the Republicans have “lost their moral compass” by trying to defund PP. I know he’s old, and confused, and doddering, but this is something else entirely.
I support doing anything that keeps this issue in the spotlight for the longest time possible. Whether or not it actually works in the short term is irrelevant. Yes, planned parenthood types will dig in and accuse of waging a war on women, but many who are in the middle or on the fence really don’t take that kind of stuff seriously. Besides, liberals will always accuse conservatives of hating women no matter what we do. Nothing they can say about us is as damaging as these videos are to them, so make it a major issue for as long as possible.
I agree that pro-choice is somewhat euphemistic (“Choice about what?”), but pro-abortion connotes that people approve or cheer-on abortion. To be sure, there are such people, but there are a lot of folks who disagree with that, but who aren’t right-to-life, either.
To take myself, I want Roe overturned and think abortion should be treated as homicide after 10 or 12 weeks. Am I pro-abortion?
I try to stay away from both the pro-choice and pro-abortion terms. I just try to say, “those who support legalized abortion” Seems to me that is the most fair and accurate way of putting it.
At one time I supported a middle ground for a criteria on life, but the only meaningful criteria I could come up with was a beating heart. That makes time irrelevant to the decision making process. If an abortionist discerns a beating heart inside the womb then the unborn has passed into a status of human life. Without such a hard criteria, it becomes arbitrary and debateable and even subjective as to the conception date.
For the record, I now support human life originating at conception.
Hmmmm. I’m torn on this one. I see more downside than upside.
Of course you are. You just set the permissible outside time limit a bit lower than many.
Really, this position isn’t the one in question. A Senator who votes to continue funding for Planned Parenthood is pro-abortion.
Frank: “Hmmmm. I’m torn on this one. I see more downside than upside.”
Interesting. Could you elaborate?
Structural barriers to the government passing laws benefit us more than they benefit the left.
You may be able to convince me that the left has done so much long term damage that we are now in the position where we have so much in terms of repealing layers of government that we need to get done that these barriers are hurting us more than helping us, but I’m torn.
Frank- that’s a fair point and one for which I have a great deal of sympathy. The reason I ultimately don’t find it to be persuasive is that I think the primary effect of extreme legislative gridlock is to enhance the power of the executive branch. I think we’re at a point where the greatest threat to the principle of limited government is the lack of constraint on an overweening executive. I prefer government to do as little as possible, but in the absence of legislative action what we have seen over the course of both Republican and Democratic administrations is that legislative inactivity does not constrain government, it merely shifts the locus of government expansion to the less accountable administrative realm.
That is a good counter argument.
I feel a Jefferson quote involving trees and blood coming on.
Win the culture like the left has done. Congressional hearings don’t matter because most people ignore them anyways.
It helps when multiple presidential candidates can be interrogators. Get Rubio and Cruz on there with the doctors.
And yes, I agree that winning the culture is the only viable, long-term strategy. This is about how we get there.
Only in the same sense that those of us who aren’t anarchists are statists.
There is obviously a wide spectrum of opinion on the issue (I am against abortion but favor health of the mother exceptions, which much of Ricochet does not) but at the legislative level, the issue is rather binary.
The democrats uniformly support abortion on demand. Period. There is not an ounce of nuance or remorse to their position. I think it’s fair to call it pro-abortion.
Or my preferred term “pro-butchering babies”.
And which side would you place either you or I on?
I have no objection to that description.
Does anyone know when the current funding for PP expires, or whether it expires? It seems like that would be important in deteemining a defunding strategy. If you pass something now to defund it, Obama vetoes it. If it expires and it’s not renewed in a Republican Congress, there’s nothing to veto.
Because a lot of it comes through medicaid it has to be specifically excluded.
Almost all of the federal dollars it receives, actually, and none of those are (directly) for abortion.
From the way this has been presented by Republicans, I was honestly under the impression that there was a Planned Parenthood line-item in the budget.
How about someone who thinks abortion should be legal up to the week before expected birth? Does that week qualify them as anti-abortion, or are they still properly thought of as pro-abortion?
Tom, our two Washington state senators, and most of the Washington legislature are emphatically pro-abortion. They specifically tried to write into some law or other (I forget which) that abortion is a basic value in the State of Washington. This failed, but just the fact that they brought it up in the first place is a pretty good indication of where the Democrats’ values are.
So its part of the mandatory entitlement spending that never expires unless its specifically camcelled?
Stipulating that I’ve never heard such a position — and find it even less defensible than you find mine — I would describe such a person as pro-abortion. If he was anti-Roe, which I suppose is possible, I’d be more than happy to work with him on that front.
Sort of.
Poor people can get subsidies or reimbursements through Medicaid for specific medical services, which include many of the non-abortion services Planned Parenthood provides. So, if a woman on Medicaid goes to PP for a gynecological exam or an STD test, the federal government will pick up part of the bill.
So, it’s not that the Feds have a policy of funding Planned Parenthood per se, but that they have a policy of funding (non-abortion) services that Planned Parenthood, among many other providers, offers.
The key to understanding what the Republicans are doing is that they do not really care. They know that the base cares. So they posture . . . as they have done now for forty-two years. Who put O’Connor, Souter, and Kennedy on the Supreme Court?
Thanks, that makes it a bit more clear.