Get ready for another shutdown.
Republicans in Congress are again threatening to withhold votes on the federal government’s annual spending bill unless certain cuts are made. No surprise there. The target this time? Planned Parenthood.
After a string of videos recorded by undercover right wing activists caught a director of Planned Parenthood allegedly admitting to selling aborted fetal tissue for profit, Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates responded with outrage.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul declared on his website, “I plan to do whatever I can to stop them and will introduce an amendment to pending Senate legislation to immediately strip every dollar of Planned Parenthood funding”. Senator Ted Cruz, the co-author of a recent bill to defund Planned Parenthood, has made the topic a central theme of his campaign, releasing a political ad that promises to “prosecute and defund Planned Parenthood.”
Where these Republicans err, though, is in the field of, well, facts.
The videos that have sparked national outrage are themselves selectively edited at best. Fusion GPS, a Washington-based research and intelligence company, analyzed the recordings and determined that they “do not present a complete or accurate record of the events they purport to depict.”
Even the apparently upsetting dialogue from the Planned Parenthood director, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, isn’t damning at all. In the video, Nucatola tells the undercover activists that they were looking for $30 to $100 per specimen, on a case by case basis – prices which were set to cover the costs of operation and transportation. This is completely normal in any other medical field. Morally and ethically, Nucatola said nothing wrong.
But let’s forget that this video even exists for a moment, because the national movement to take away Planned Parenthood’s federal funding is still completely misguided without that background. Here’s a fact: federal funding cannot legally be used on abortion services with the exception of operations involving rape, incest, or cases where the mother’s life or health is in danger.
What would be achieved by taking Planned Parenthood off of federal funding then? Well, the vast majority of its services are non-abortion services, 97 percent according to its 2013-14 annual report. These include STI and HIV tests (over 3 million given last year), pregnancy tests (over 1 million given last year), HPV vaccinations, pap tests, breast exams for screening cancer, prenatal services, and vasectomies, to name a few. Interested in going on birth control? Go to Planned Parenthood. Want some condoms that aren’t locked in a bulletproof crystal case? Go to Planned Parenthood.
These services are overwhelmingly used by people in low-income situations, too. As of 2012, 79 percent of people using Planned Parenthood services lived at 150 percent of poverty level or lower, according to a Government Accountability Office report from March. Planned Parenthood services aren’t used as birth control via abortion. They are used by those in compromising financial situations – low income households and students. It isn’t a leap to believe that if Planned Parenthood loses federal funding, cases of STIs and unplanned pregnancies will rise, costing the taxpayers more in the long run.
At this point in the election cycle, it is baffling to see Republican nominees take this stance on women’s health and reproductive rights again. The GOP have alienated one of the most important voting blocs (women 18-30) during the past two elections, and it (among other things) ended up costing them the Oval Office. This policy is backwards and irrelevant to contemporary American society.
The beneficial services Planned Parenthood provides are too essential to let go. Taking their federal funding away would be a destructive move with the direst consequences falling on the members of American society with the thinnest safety net.