When someone mentions the defunding of Planned Parenthood to me, I don’t dignify that comment with a response. The very idea of defunding an organization that has helped so many women is offensive to me. My feelings on this subject has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that some Planned Parenthood’s offer abortions. My feelings have everything to do with how much Planned Parenthood has helped not only women, but men, since its inception.
They offer pap smears that screen for cancer, a variety of birth control methods, including compassionate abortion in some cases, HIV services, LGBT services, services for men, and more.
Planned Parenthood offers general health services for low-income women. Women who are either receiving some sort of government welfare or, if they become pregnant with a child, will have to receive government welfare. Women don’t become pregnant by themselves. If Planned Parenthood is responsive to low income women, they are also assisting the men who are their partners. The men involved in an unplanned pregnancy might also need government welfare. The services that Planned Parenthood offers can keep a couple, not just a woman, off the welfare rolls.
The current Congress and President, as part of the conservative movement in the U.S., has been determined to defund Planned Parenthood on the federal level and turn whatever is left over to the states. This Congress and President also want to severely cut back the Medicaid program, our current version of government welfare. The two initiatives don’t seem to be compatible. Cut Medicaid and Planned Parenthood? Where are women and men who are low-income and possibly out of a job going to get health services, particularly in the face of a pregnancy? Where are low-income women going to get birth control services, along with family planning advice?
Does the conservative government really think that low-income women are just going to stop having children? They have to know that such a scenario is ridiculous. They will keep having children and the welfare rolls will swell. Emergency room visits will also swell as the women will have no health care options.
Does the conservative movement in the U.S. care? My thoughts? They will only care when it starts costing them money. They won’t care about the men and women they are hurting in the process.
Other posts by other bloggers:
Why We Need Planned Parenthood
What Gives White Men the Right to Take Away a Woman’s Right to Basic Health Care?
The Write Scribe 
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Thank you!
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Sure and ALL that PP has to do is to stop offering abortions and this debacle ends. But, of course, it’s always conservatives’ fault and never PP.
You might also consider that many of us find killing off the unborn to be at least as heinous as…….nazis? Maybe slavery since both slavery and abortions are arguments about personhood.
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Nothing is as heinous as a Nazi. Nothing. Have you ever considered that black men were transported to the U.S. to be used as slaves by white men? Now the white men who have become white supremacists are wanting to kill the black men who are the descendents of their ancestors who brought them to the U.S. in the first place?
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Wrong. First slaves were brought to this country by black men. Nice try tho
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The 3% figure you parrot that comes from PP themselves, is misleading and uses very creative means to arrive at that figure. On the other side of the coin, opposition uses the same creative math to arrive at their, much larger ones. An article in the Washington post used politifact and thoroughly explained the stats, probably the best way possible. They came to the conclusion that PP does not provide all the information needed to come to a truly reliable figure, and indeed they are not required to, so until they decide to be more forthright, the issue will not resolve itself. I quote their final analysis here:
“The 3 percent figure that Planned Parenthood uses is misleading, comparing abortion services to every other service that it provides. The organization treats each service — pregnancy test, STD test, abortion, birth control — equally. Yet there are obvious difference between a surgical (or even medical) abortion, and offering a urine (or even blood) pregnancy test. These services are not all comparable in how much they cost or how extensive the service or procedure is.
The 94 percent figure that Susan B. Anthony List uses also is misleading, comparing abortion services to two other types of services that pregnant women receive through Planned Parenthood. But we don’t know how many pregnant women Planned Parenthood serves every year or how many they refer to private providers for prenatal care, because the organization does not report that information.
With limited data, there is no accurate way to measure how much of Planned Parenthood’s activities comprise abortions. Both sides are using meaningless and incomplete comparisons to make their argument, and the public should be wary of both figures. Thus, both receive Three Pinocchios.
While Planned Parenthood has no legal obligation to make its data more public, it is unfortunate that the public has limited access to data about the organization. Planned Parenthood could end the speculation–and Pinocchios–by providing a more transparent breakdown of its clients, referrals and sources of revenues”.
You are also quite conveniently overlooking the videos that were made that would seem to fly in the face of this org. having anything to do with with being a stellar “health care provider” for women. There are so many of these videos available, it is insane to simply dismiss them because of the controversy over who and how they were obtained.
I have no trouble with funding for poor women’s healthcare. But until PP decides to come clean and provide information that enables us to decipher whether or not our taxpayer dollars are funding the slaughter of innocent children…you and I BOTH know that is exactly what abortion does…I say defund, and let private donations take over. There’s a plethora of businesses willing to champion this cause, let them have it.
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Sorry, I didn’t get my statistics from Planned Parenthood. You can trash Planned Parenthood all you want. If it were not for that organization, many women could not afford birth control and there would be more unplanned pregnancies than there already are. I have no idea what “videos” you’re talking about. Your “Pinocchios” came from a conservative political website.
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Why do these women need birth control?
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Poor women need birth control too.
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