Defunding Planned Parenthood. Will it succeed?

[Elizabeth502]

Rence, I do agree that PP is consumer-driven. I think it’s a fallacy that minorities get the sudden inspiration, let alone “pressure” to have abortions just because there may be more concentrations of PP clincis in those neighborhoods. What I always (btw) felt about PP is that they set up in urban areas because of density (again, for economic reasons). And it is true that minorities are more concentrated in urban areas. Therefore I think many Catholics make connections that PP “targets” minorities because of location, when it’s more logical that they’re targeting population density. I don’t know, I could be wrong: are there lots of rural PP and suburban PP centers? (in similar percentages?)

I think that Catholics also connect Margaret Sanger’s eugenics beliefs with current PP intentions, but I don’t think necessarily that the two are related at all. I think most modern young women do not know anything about Sanger’s political persuasions, nor do frankly many, if not most, of the PP administrators.

With regard to your paragraph about contraceptives, again I am divided about this. I understand what you’re saying about the general adult public in the U.S., and can’t argue with freedom of choice, nor do I want to. I do have a concern with PP’s platform about “establishing sexual rights,” particularly as applied to minors. So now we have a new entitlement, which is ‘I get to have sex whenever I want, under whatever conditions, and at whatever age.’ It’s bypassing the parenting role, first of all, and acting like Big Sister, preemptively, which I find just magnifies the social ills we already have in encouraging extra-family decisions. As I said earlier, I’d feel more comfortable, if they were going to take an educational role with regard to minors rather than a marketing role with regard to minors.

 

[mcteague]

Then since you now acknowledge that my position is not extreme, perhaps you would like to address your non-responsive comments about the Bible, which do not pertain to my posts, to those whose positions are more extreme than mine, which include at least 7 posters on this very thread. (Wait: their posts also did not mention the Bible.) Hmmm.

You know, there are at least two people on this thread that would do extremely well to learn the following rules of debate, which are also referred to in the forum rules:
–stick to the concepts that are actually being debated
–do not attribute ideas & beliefs to posters who do not express those
–actually read what you write before you submit it, including noticing whether what you claim has even been stated by the person to whom you attirbute it.

Please refrain from taking that pedantic tone.
I actually think your posts are quite interesting. Especially the statistically based ones.
I did not distort your view on contraception. I simply asked you to repeat or clarify it.

If you really want to be a stickler about it we could note that the thread subject really asked a purely predictive question. Any responses addressing any other aspect of the broader issues could be called outside the concepts being debated. However that is not really the manner most discussion occurs.

You actually remind me of an old friend. Who is also very intelligent. He would ask me "Is that a new hat?. I responded " yes, are those new shoes? Then he would respond. “Shoes!! I didn’t say anything about shoes. Who said anything about shoes”.

My point with the “Inherit the wind” analogy is that many on the pro-life side of the abortion debate often fail to examine or consider aspects not fully encompassed by the Catholic position. They fail to address these broader topics because they see the issue in a simple right or wrong manner. I do not believe making that point is off topic. Neither do I believe that I, or anyone, should be restricted to exclusively addressing statements you make when replying. It should be obvious which parts of a reply are specific responses to things you have said, and which parts are expansions into different areas.

 

[Personanongrata]

No. Here’s what’s “better,” because it’s the only version that is accurate and truthful. And anyone surveying the posts with any care will see that this is obvious:

“Gardenman, Catholic1954, Labarum, hxcCatholic413, TimothyH, GodLovestheSpek, and Apollos5600 do not have the right to tell other women where to go for reproductive health care services, which include abortion. Their posts, not Elizabeth502’s, at least implied, and in some cases stated, that PP should be absolutely opposed (including defunding) despite the combination of services provided. Those posters might believe they have the moral right to tell all American women where they may and may not go for reproductive health care services, including legalized abortion. However, until abortion is declared illegal, they will find a tough fight in the Congress and the courts, because such opposition will not be considered on solid legal ground by the public.”

"Elizabeth, on the other hand, stated specifically in multiple posts on this thread that she does not believe that contraception per se is the “root” of abortion, and she provided references for those beliefs, which corrobate them. She further refrained from even once suggesting remotely that adult women should be forbidden from accessing legally available medical services."

So there was nothing in there about the fictional ‘you and I’ not telling women where to go or not go. Speak for yourself if you feel guilty. I do not because I know I neither said nor implied any such thing. All you’re trying to do now is cover your tracks rather than own up to your misrepresentation.

Ok. Feel better now???

 

[estesbob]

Given the recent exposes of Planned Parenthood and the attention it has garnered, do you think we can be successful in once and for all DE-funding this organization ? What more will it take for the people of this country to finally say “enough is enough” and demand that our tax dollars not go to promoting this oragnizations horrific agenda?

Not until 2012 when we get a Republican president and Republican Senate

 

[estesbob]

75% of Planned Parenthood’s clientele are 150% below the poverty line - about $33,000 for a family of four. The largest service it provides is affordable birth control for consenting, impoverished adults. Isn’t there a chance that cutting funding and availability of birth control will resort in even more abortions?

Guttmacher, which tracks statistics on reproductive health and abortion predicts the cut of Title X will result in a 1/3 rise in unplanned pregnancies

Surely we can find a way to provide health care for poor women without them having to go to an organization that has a vested interest in talking them into killing their child.

 

[Mary_Gail_36]

The topic at hand, though, is defunding PP, not shutting it down.

We have an enormous US debt…if PP is so vital (a bit of an oxymoron) they could rely on private funds.

Like crisis pregnancy centers do.

 

[Sherry_G]

The topic at hand, though, is defunding PP, not shutting it down.

We have an enormous US debt…if PP is so vital (a bit of an oxymoron) they could rely on private funds.

Like crisis pregnancy centers do.

Agreed… Let this organization find the funding they need from all the folks who think what they are doing is so wonderful and let the taxpayers off the hook on this one. Most organizations don’t get funded by the government nor should they.

 

[Labarum]

PP excited over taking donations targeted at minority abortions. youtube.com/watch?v=apLjGQnTVg8&feature=player_embedded#at=89

 

[RobbyS]

When did George Bush get elected to the Senate?? I must have fallen asleep.

Bush represents one faction in the Republican Party that claims to be “pro-life”. But that does not means he or his like will take up arms against planned Parenthood, and his like includes both Texas senators.

 

[Sherry_G]

Bush represents one faction in the Republican Party that claims to be “pro-life”. But that does not means he or his like will take up arms against planned Parenthood, and his like includes both Texas senators.

Thanks for sharing your personal opinion.

 

[RobbyS]

Rence, I do agree that PP is consumer-driven. I think it’s a fallacy that minorities get the sudden inspiration, let alone “pressure” to have abortions just because there may be more concentrations of PP clincis in those neighborhoods. What I always (btw) felt about PP is that they set up in urban areas because of density (again, for economic reasons). And it is true that minorities are more concentrated in urban areas. Therefore I think many Catholics make connections that PP “targets” minorities because of location, when it’s more logical that they’re targeting population density. I don’t know, I could be wrong: are there lots of rural PP and suburban PP centers? (in similar percentages?)

I think that Catholics also connect Margaret Sanger’s eugenics beliefs with current PP intentions, but I don’t think necessarily that the two are related at all. I think most modern young women do not know anything about Sanger’s political persuasions, nor do frankly many, if not most, of the PP administrators.

With regard to your paragraph about contraceptives, again I am divided about this. I understand what you’re saying about the general adult public in the U.S., and can’t argue with freedom of choice, nor do I want to. I do have a concern with PP’s platform about “establishing sexual rights,” particularly as applied to minors. So now we have a new entitlement, which is ‘I get to have sex whenever I want, under whatever conditions, and at whatever age.’ It’s bypassing the parenting role, first of all, and acting like Big Sister, preemptively, which I find just magnifies the social ills we already have in encouraging extra-family decisions. As I said earlier, I’d feel more comfortable, if they were going to take an educational role with regard to minors rather than a marketing role with regard to minors.

I disagree that the leaders of Planned Parenthood have put Margaret Sanger behind them. Rather, they have internalized her malthusianism and her pessimism about new life. If we study the conditions in the slums which Sanger observed, you can appreciate why she advocated birth control. The immigrant women hardly had
room to turn around in their “homes.” Every new child was a threat to her way of life. But more than sympathy drove her mission. She was a socialist, and to socialists material existence is all there is. No accident that the first country in the world to legalize abortion was the Soviet Union. Today’s Planned Parenthood types are --to be sure–middleclass and have the same desire to control the lives of others that animated the “progressive” reformers animates them today. Never mind that the material conditions of the lower classes has improved marketly, so that even the poorest lives a more comfortable life than the middle class did a hundred years ago. The bar has been raised. The belief is that every new child is a debit against the common good.

 

[RobbyS]

Thanks for sharing your personal opinion.

Surely you don’t think that Kaye Bailey would ever condemn Planned Parenthood?
See how they vote. What matters is not my opinion but their actions.

 

[RobbyS]

Surely we can find a way to provide health care for poor women without them having to go to an organization that has a vested interest in talking them into killing their child.

Indeed. The irony is that when the pill made its appearnce, Planned Parenthhod crowed that the perfect birth control method had been found, so that abortions would rarely be performed. This is the message they sold to gullible Catholic priests. Of course at the time they actually thought this was true. Then reality bit them, and they saw the huge increase in demand for abortion and the scarcity of providers because the public resisted. So they stepped in. They become a means by which the Hyde Amendment could be dodged.

 

[Trader]

Indiana has a reputation for being behind the times, maybe 20 years or so.

This week Indiana took the lead over most of the country in our State Assembly. A new law officially opts out of the Obamacare requirement to pay for abortions through Medicaid; greatly strengthens the informed consent requirement before any abortion can be performed; prohibits all abortions after 20 weeks because of medical evidence that a fetus experiences pain by that age—patterned after a similar law in Nebraska; and bars all state payments to any entity that also performs abortions, ie Planned Parenthood.

The vote in the House was almost 2 to 1 in favor. Even some Democrats voted for it.

 

[josepham]

I pray that it will not succeed. Too many poor women need the services.

I fail to see how Planned Parenthood helps the poor. Margaret Sanger, the founder of planned parenthood, was into eugenics. She considered the poor as those who will eventually become genetically inferior, due to poor nutrition etc. They cannot afford the best cuts of meat or the healthiest foods. Thus the rich are genetically superior to the poor and her contraception advocating is designed to eliminate the poor ultimately. Not to mention the elimination of Blacks. I read that out of 17,000 fetuses found at one abortion site I believe 12,000 were black children. She was a monster. A woman after Adolf Hitlers own heart. You better do some research on this woman and the goals of Planned Parenthood before you cry for the poor with the loss of birth con trol.

 

[Pono_Patrol]

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, as has been stated by many posters believed that inferior races were human weeds and a menace to civilization. These very “weeds” comprise a large percentage of PPFA’s clients. There are many reasons beyond her racist views to why PPFA should be defunded.
First, PPFA president Cecile Richards has falsely claimed that if defunded, “…millions of women in this country are going to lose their health-care access – not to abortion services – to basic family planning, you know, mammograms.” In truth, PPFA clinics only offer referrals to health centers, doctors, hospitals and labs for mammograms.
Secondly, in 2009 only 19,796 out of its 3 million unduplicated clients were considered primary care clients. Furthermore, the US has over 1,000 Federally Qualified Health Centers that specifically serve Medicaid/Medicare patients where women can seek primary care, contraception, STI testing, and cancer screening.
Finally, PPFA has almost one billion dollars in net assets and has profited $504.9 million over the last nine years. Congress spends billions every year for women’s health care, through Medicaid, Medicare and other programs. The untaxed PPFA has proven it can stand independently.
I really believe that if we are to get PPFA defunded we as Catholics, and Christians in general, need to focus on the economic side of this argument if we are to win over the fence sitters and some of those in the Pro-Death crowd. It’s been proven that the opposition could care less about our moral arguments. In the meantime, let’s pray that the horror of abortion will end and that more of our Catholic brothers and sisters accept our faith in its entirety and not just the cafeteria version of it.
May the Lord’s peace be with you all…

 

[Sherry_G]

Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, as has been stated by many posters believed that inferior races were human weeds and a menace to civilization. These very “weeds” comprise a large percentage of PPFA’s clients. There are many reasons beyond her racist views to why PPFA should be defunded.
First, PPFA president Cecile Richards has falsely claimed that if defunded, “…millions of women in this country are going to lose their health-care access – not to abortion services – to basic family planning, you know, mammograms.” In truth, PPFA clinics only offer referrals to health centers, doctors, hospitals and labs for mammograms.
Secondly, in 2009 only 19,796 out of its 3 million unduplicated clients were considered primary care clients. Furthermore, the US has over 1,000 Federally Qualified Health Centers that specifically serve Medicaid/Medicare patients where women can seek primary care, contraception, STI testing, and cancer screening.
Finally, PPFA has almost one billion dollars in net assets and has profited $504.9 million over the last nine years. Congress spends billions every year for women’s health care, through Medicaid, Medicare and other programs. The untaxed PPFA has proven it can stand independently.
I really believe that if we are to get PPFA defunded we as Catholics, and Christians in general, need to focus on the economic side of this argument if we are to win over the fence sitters and some of those in the Pro-Death crowd. It’s been proven that the opposition could care less about our moral arguments. In the meantime, let’s pray that the horror of abortion will end and that more of our Catholic brothers and sisters accept our faith in its entirety and not just the cafeteria version of it.
May the Lord’s peace be with you all…

I agree with your position in its entirety. While I have stood on the sidewalk and prayed myself, and have seen a few conversions of heart and know that this ministry does provide another solution for those who come seeking a quick fix to their personal dilemnas, in reality those who are blinded to the truth of moral arguments could at least entertain the logical financial aspects of what we are doing with our taxpayer dollars at a time when our infrastructure is crumbling and cut backs are needed. Fiscal responsiblility also demands that these programs of horror should be stricken from the budget!

 

[st_lucy]

Honestly, I am not interested in discussing Margaret Sanger, simply because she is dead, and IMO not relevant to PP of today. I don’t believe that PP holds her values, as if they ever really did.

I personally know women who use health care via Planned Parenthood. Birth control, mammograms and some get prenatal as well. I support PP because of these women. “Sound bites” re: Sanger mean nothing to me.

You are allowed to have your own opinion. I have mine.

Just wanted to point out that PP does NOT proved mammograms!

Don’t believe the lie PP’s bottom line is to proved abortions. Read Abby Johnsons book Unplanned.

I personally cannot ever understand a how a Catholic woman can ever say she will always support a group who they know kills children for profit. No matter what other “good” service they may provide that simple fact that they kill children should always be the reason NOT support them. How one tries to raitionilze their way out of that simple fact is amazing. There is absolutly nothing that can off set the fact that children are being killed at PP.

 

[josepham]

I pray that it will not succeed. Too many poor women need the services.

You know you try to come across as compassionate to poor women and your one case of some kind of good coming from this organization but I do not believe you are all that compassionate. You see, in abortion the baby is ripped limb from limb, in saline abortions the baby is pickled to death, or they are killed by taking them out of the womb before they can survive on their own. I am assuming you know the evil done to the baby in partial birth abortions. Your compassion is misspent. At least your friend who benfited from pp service had a chance to live and experience the gift of life. Planned Parenthood kills babys and causes them a great deal of suffering. You cannot separate them from this evil act and any other occassional benefit that may come to some “poor” woman. Many dead people live on through their ideas and ideologies. Your remark that you won’t discuss her as she is dead, does not close the argument as you like to think is does. Margaret Sanger believed in elimating these poor women you are so worried about. And she lives on through plannned parenthood. One of their supercenters is located in the heart of a Black and Hispanic neighborhood. Eliminating the poor, that was Margaret Sangers goal, whether you want to talk about her or not and Planned Parenthood carries on her mission. You criticize others for false facts but I don’t believe you have any of your own. Also, as a Catholic you should know that people don’t die…they fall asleep until the Ressurection of the Just on the last day. Souls do not die and the body will be restored on the last day. I think you need to read about abortion on a pro-life web site and observe what an evil force it is in the world and how the wrath of God, at our Unwillingness to end it,is resulting in a lot of the evil taking place in the world today. No one but God has the right to end a life. Your compassion is misspent at best if you truly are compassionate, as you have none for the unborn child. Abortion can never be tolerated and as a Catholic you should know this. The Church feel so strongly on this point that it will refuse Holy Communion to some members in public office who openly support abortion. By supporting planned parenthood you are indirectly, at best, supporting the legalized killing of innocent children. My daughter and I prayed the Rosary in front of our local Planned Parenthood building and a pregnant women came out, smiled at us and got in her car and drove away. I can’t help but feel she was “richer” for it.

 

[josepham]

PP provides more than abortion services, and women need access to them. I am one of those women who support Planned Parenthood. “Attack” statements mean nothing to me.

Also, your name, Personanongrata, makes me believe that you are not even Catholic as you already have given yourself a name which implies you are unwanted and unliked Let me make it clear…if you support abortion you are NOT Catholic, which I don’t believe you are anyway. These “attack” statements are the truth,. you cannot make yourself an authority by simply saying, “I don’t care.” or “It makes no difference to me.” You are trying to stir up trouble which your name implies. You gave yourself away. I will pray for you. You are in great need of prayer. I leave you to you erroneous thoughts and statements and hope somewhere down the line God will have Mercy on you and give you the Grace to be a believer. Mercy which you are unwilling to extend to the unborn children whose “silent scream” your compassionate self has turned a deaf ear to.