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House GOP Moves to End Federal Funding of Planned Parenthood
We’re used to the GOP Congress making headlines for breaking promises to their voters or letting Democrats pick their pockets. So it’s especially satisfying to hear Paul Ryan’s latest detail on the House Republicans’ Obamacare strategy: no more funds for Planned Parenthood.
Republicans plan to strip Planned Parenthood of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding as part of their rapid push to repeal President Obama’s health-care overhaul, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said Thursday.
Ryan said a defunding measure would appear in a special fast-track bill that is expected to pass Congress as soon as next month. “Planned Parenthood legislation would be in our reconciliation bill,” he said at a news conference in response to a question about plans to defund the organization.
Reconciliation is a special congressional procedure allowing legislation to bypass a Senate filibuster, meaning it would need only a simple majority of senators to pass rather than a 60-vote supermajority.
Ryan made his comments two days after a special investigative panel formed by Republicans issued a report recommending that Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, lose its access to Medicaid reimbursements and federal family-planning funds. The GOP report also recommended that Congress allow states to exclude abortion providers from their Medicaid programs.
The federal government gave Planned Parenthood $553 million in 2014, about half of its total funding. Technically, they’re not supposed to use that money for abortions, but that “service” is central to their mission.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi blasted the move. “I just would like to speak individually to women across America,” she said. “This is about respect for you, for your judgment about your personal decisions in terms of your reproductive needs, the size and timing of your family or the rest, not to be determined by the insurance company or by the Republican ideological right-wing caucus in the House of Representatives.”
News for Pelosi: According to a recent Marist poll, 69 percent of women oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.
Published in Healthcare
And if we’re ‘funding’ PP, we’re funding abortions.
If they have the ‘choice’ to abort their baby, why don’t I have the ‘choice’ not to pay for it?
Well, I guess these are the women who are too stupid to get birth control. But doesn’t look like they are going to PP either. Still no reason I should have to pay for their abortions.
Agreed. But that would mean employing truthful, unbiased language – and I think we both know what the chances for that are.
Mine either.
Like others, I’ll get excited when it actually happens.
Half our nation still considers the license to kill innocent children sacrosanct. Rot of that magnitude leaves a long struggle ahead.
I deal every week with patients who have been cared for by PP in my moderate-sized New England city. It’s cheap, assembly line contraceptive care. Medical issues relevant to contraception are largely overlooked by the often overworked, usually inferior quality CNMs and PAs who provide most of the care. There are no mammograms done, largely because there are few patients over 30.
When I was in academic medicine, I spent five or six months overseeing a PP office in a nearby state, this after their medical director lost his license over a botched abortion. Before my opposition to abortion got me canned, I managed to get some of the staff to at least pay attention to patients’ medical histories, to complicating factors, to signs of serious disease.
Nothing happens at PP that could not happen, and would be done better, in any PCP or ObGyn or Pediatrics office in America, except for the abortions.
PP fills no legitimate niche in American medical culture. They are the medical equivalent of the SPLC. They are a scam to funnel millions of tax dollars to wealthy, elite abortionists.
Eliminating tax payments is not enough. Shut Down Planned Parenthood.
Jon has always been great…he just had a very itchy rash for the last 8 months.
This is entirely obnoxious. Gallup polls consistently show that women self-identify as pro-choice only about 50% or 51% of the time, and over 40% identify as pro-life. I believe that ending a child’s life is not, except in the most dire of situations, a matter of my judgement. It’s simply wrong. I do not think that ending my child’s life is a valid personal decision. I can time a family without ending the life of a member already part of it – albeit a small member whom no one has yet to meet.
The one problem is that Republicans consistently sell this as “defunding” Planned Parenthood, rather than redirecting funds from the nation’s largest abortion provider to a larger, more comprehensive network of clinics, for the same services. There are about ten times as many free or reduced-fee clinics as there are PP locations, and those clinics are in a wider variety of areas (i.e., suburbs and rural areas that PP is not). They also perform a wider variety of services (no, PP does not perform mammograms), which makes life easier on low-income women.
Exactly!
HOORAY!!
(If it actually happens.)
You make it sound as though PP provides the equivalent of the back alley abortions that were once used as a club with which to beat the abortion opponents.
A baby dies either way.
I live and work in Austin, TX so naturally the liberal/progressives I work with assume I have the same beliefs they do. Last year, during a lunch out with several co-workers, some of them were complaining about the “horrible” undercover videos regarding PP selling baby parts. The horrible part being that they were edited and therefore must be false. When I asked them if the editing changed the fact that PP had cut up babies and sold them for parts, I was met with blank stares. “But they do so much good!” one person commented. My reply: “They cut up babies and sold them for parts.” Blank stares all around.
When my (now-ex) wife suspected she might be pregnant (over thirty years ago), she did the home pregnancy test and it came back positive. It did warn on the box that it wasn’t 100% reliable and to see a doctor. We were dirt poor so she went to PP for the free pregnancy test, which was also positive. PP immediately started twisting her arm to get an abortion. She explained that she was married, did not believe in abortion, and was just trying to confirm the home test. To make a long story short, they treated her about the same way you would be treated if you had an appointment to discuss buying into a time-share. My ex finally had enough (this did not take long) and started heading for the door. They followed her clear out to the parking lot, asking questions like “Is someone pressuring you to do this?” etc. Our child was born later that year.
Every time I hear this crap about PP being a “women’s health care provider” I think back to that day. If my ex wasn’t so strong-willed she might easily have been talked into making a terrible mistake. They certainly weren’t concerned about providing any health care to the woman – my daughter – who would not be here now if they had had their way.
In public infrastructure, it’s known as “user fees” (aka tolls on bridges and toll roads). Get used to it. You have the choice not to use the bridge/road and not pay the toll. You have the choice to pay for it if you value the convenience of a one-stop service provider who values your privacy. Hey, there are probably some reasons why you might want to use PP and spend your own funds over using a real health provider (it’s hard for me to lump PP in with real health providers when one of their services is dealing in death).