Planned Parenthood funding threatened [Why is it tax-funded to being with?]

The Herald Palladium (St. Joseph-Benton Harbor Michigan The Newspaper for Southwest Michigan) ^ | 1-5-2002 | LYNN STEVENS

[Notwithstanding]

The Herald Palladium Archives

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January 05, 2002

Planned Parenthood funding threatened

By LYNN STEVENS / H-P Staff Writer

With help from Southwest Michigan legislators, family planning agencies that merely mention abortion options could be pushed to the end of the state funding line.

And poor people seeking birth control could suffer the consequences, say those opposed to the bill passed last month by the state House. Opponents say the bill is a thinly veiled attack on Planned Parenthood, which has offices in Benton Harbor and South Haven.

Berrien County's state representatives Ron Jelinek and Charles LaSata voted for the bill as did Mary Ann Middaugh of Paw Paw.

The Senate will likely take up the bill in February, said state Sen. Harry Gast, R-Lincoln Township.

Gast is skeptical about the bill, calling it little more than a legislative litmus test thrown down by Right to Life of Michigan.

He said he has long tired of the organization's uncompromising ways. "Even in a life-and-death situation, there's no deviation in the Right to Life scorebook," he said.

If Right to Life shows no compromise, then "I'm ready and willing to walk the plank on this one," Gast said.

It could be a lonely walk.

"Every bill that I can remember that was a choice whether or not people would have access to abortion, the Right To Life people have prevailed. In the Senate, I would say it's 2/3 to 1/3 in favor of Right To Life."

Gast said no one is for abortion, "but I would not condemn anyone for it, in very limited circumstances."

If the bill is carried out as written, public health departments may lose federal money - distributed by the state - and Planned Parenthood offices may cut family planning services to poor and moderate-income women, say the bill's opponents. Ironically, public health officials and Planned Parenthood officials say eliminating pregnancy prevention services could increase the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions in Michigan.

The bill would grant funding priority to agencies and organizations that do not perform abortions, do not make abortion referrals, and do not advocate for continued legal abortion.

Jelinek, (R-Three Oaks) said he understands "all the services that have been available will continue to be available ... organizations that do not perform abortions will have higher priority.

"Now if nobody else is available, funds will still go to that institution," which could be Planned Parenthood.

He said the bill does not affect public health departments because they do not perform abortions.

But according to federal law, health departments would be affected because they and all other providers that get federal Title X funding are required to explain all reproductive health options. At the moment, abortion is a legal procedure in the United States, and therefore, federal law requires it to be included in the list of options.

LaSata (R-St. Joseph) said the bill would not affect state funds going specifically to Planned Parenthood in Southwest Michigan.

LaSata said all state funding for health services is allocated by county, and each county's share is determined by its population. Because there is no alternative health care provider in Berrien County, there would be no change in family planning service levels.

"Charlie LaSata is not correct on that," said Margy Long, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood-Mid-Michigan Alliance.

"Charlie may be making the assumption that Title X funds are dispersed the same way as other state funds, but in fact, there's nothing in this bill that says that's how it has to happen," said Long, whose alliance includes Cass, Van Buren and Berrien counties. "There's nothing to prevent the money from going to some other place.

"The money all goes into one big pot. It gets dispersed among all the providers in the state. The goal is that services should be geographically widespread. There's nothing in the bill that requires that."

Jelinek and LaSata, endorsed in 2000 by Michigan Right to Life, justified their votes on the basis of a 1988 state referendum banning use of public funds for abortions for women receiving public aid unless necessary to save the life of the mother.

Although state voters stopped tax-funded abortions, legislators should not believe the public opposes legalized abortion or supports the House bill, said Charlotte Wenham, former president of Planned Parenthood.

The longtime St. Joseph resident said every poll in the last decade, including polls paid for by sitting legislators, has shown that people in Southwest Michigan overwhelmingly support abortion rights.

Wenham said Right To Life's ideology is overshadowing health care issues.

"The question is: Are legislators voting in the best interest of health care of all individuals, including those who can't afford it, or in favor of the strongest lobbyists in Lansing? I don't think health care is an area where we can experiment for religious and political reasons."

Mark Bertler, executive director of the Michigan Association for Local Public Health, wrote in August 2001 to the chairman of the House committee considering the bill. He wrote that his board, representing public health departments across the state, opposed it.

"The board is concerned that this legislation may put Michigan's successful family planning and pregnancy prevention programs at risk. Over the past two years Michigan has received $40 million in federal bonuses for reducing teen pregnancy, out-of-wedlock births and reducing the number of abortions in our state. ... As currently written, the bill stigmatizes all providers, including local health departments."

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[Tribune7]

And poor people seeking birth control could suffer the consequences, say those opposed to the bill passed last month by the state House.

This is real objective journalism, isn't it?

[GenXFreedomFighter]

This is real objective journalism, isn't it?

It is unless you're one of those judgmental extremist meanies who dare to oppose abortion as a means of birth control.

(/sarcasm)

[toenail]

Why is PP funded with our tax dollars in the first place? Because Rockefeller Republicans don't like minorities. As good a start as any....

[Cicero]

Title X never should have been passed. Having been passed, congress should rescind it. The federal government has no business being in the sex business.

Planned Parenthood is a major funder of pro-abortion propaganda. It's also a huge business, which makes money by selling teenagers on sex, then selling them condoms and abortions. Abortion brings in huge profits, usually said to be in the neighborhood of a billion dollars a year.

Why, indeed, should taxpayers be funding people who profit by seducing and corrupting our children and then aborting their babies?

[Wolfie]

Its tax-funded because we have in this country a system whereby every special interest can try go garner enough power and influence over elected officials to have others pay for their personal vision of how the world should be. Why are faith-based charities going to be tax-funded?

[IM2Phat4U]

Here's another good reason to defund these creeps:

Planned Parenthood Romanticizes Violence and Criminal Conduct to Teens

[Tribune7]

The only thing that comforts me is that the pro-abort dailies are dying.

[Surge-on]

Like it or not, Planned Parenthood is a public health organization. That’s why they qualify for tax dollars.

Boy there is an oxymoron if you ever saw one. PP is a thinly disguised abortion mill whose prime function is to exterminate children.
It is the greatest tragedy of our times. Pray for the holy innocents!

[Tribune7]

Like it or not, Planned Parenthood is a public health organization.

The definition of "public health organzation" can always be changed in law.

[toenail]

"Like it or not, Planned Parenthood is a public health organization. That’s why they qualify for tax dollars."

Planned Parenthood helps suppress minority births. That's why they were founded, and that's what they've always aimed to do. Title X was sponsored by Spookdaddy Bush, aided by Rockefeller Republicans, who make no real secret of their goal to mold humanity into the image of the white northern-European producer/consumer.

[Notwithstanding]

How do you define health?

If a body system is functioning perfectly well, then the body is healthy. Elective convenience procedures or treatments have always been private matters. Birth control is elective and for convenience or pleasure - not necessity.

What is more, birth control is not healthcare - birth control shuts down a healthy system and causes it to malfunction.

And abortion - th emain profit center for Planned Parenthood - could be considered health care by no objective definition of the term. No one's health is preserved by 999,999 abortions out of 1,000,000. And one person is killed in every abortion. And the mental health of a majority of moms who have had abortions is negatively affected for life.

[Notwithstanding]

"have always been private matters" - as to funding (lest any one think that I meant that abortion is a private matter!)

[bvw]

Hmmm ... is ROLF-ing, or EST, or TM also matters of public health, or is sanity not a public health issue?

I wish I had more modern equivalents, but these will do, hopefully you may already know what they are.

[Notwithstanding]

You either don't know much about PP or you are pretending no to. The huge bulk of what they do is treating healthy functioning body systems and ensuring that they will not work. A tiny fraction of what they do is health care.

[toenail]

"Somebody asked a simple question (“why do they receive tax dollars?”), and I gave a simple answer (“because they provide public health services”).

That the guise, but it doesn't answer the question.

Here is a nice explanation. Start a couple of paragraphs above "There is also a reason why American elitists like the Harrimans and the Bushes become such fanatics for eugenics and population reduction."

[BlackElk]

If Planned Barrenhood is a public health organization, then Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen and Sobibor and all the other camps must have been "public health organizations" too. The results were quite similar and Dr. Mengele, the Nazi "angel of death" escaped Germany at the end of the war to take up a second career in Latin America as, what else?, an abortionist.

Check out the history of PP and find such winsome figures as Lothrop Stoddard, Ph.D. in history from Harvard and Margaret Sanger's and PP's "official observer" at the sessions of the 1930's Nazi Eugenics Courts, writing breathless monthly dispatches back to America about what a spiffy job Herr Hitler was doing cleaning up the gene pool in der Vaterland.

I am no more eager to fund Planned Barrenhood's 100,000+ infanticides per year and their incessant propaganda in favor of the business of other paid killers of innocent children with tax money, no less, than I would be willing to fund a revival of Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia.

Don't believe me? Fine. There are still copies of the books of PP's original leading lights: Margaret Sanger, Lothrop Stoddard, Madison Grant, etc. Check the books out and read their own words.

[Tribune7]

Abortions . . . are most certainly matters of public health.

War is peace. Love is hate. Big Brother loves you.

[BlackElk]

Madj, oh Madj, if you really want to find Planned Barrenhood's truth, obtain a copy of Lothrop Stoddard's 1918 classic: The Rising Tide of Color. It was written before the Nazi Party was founded and before Hitler was jailed for the Beer hall Putsch, before Hitler's Mein Kampf, but the title is only the beginning.

The chapters include The White Man's World, The Brown Man's World, The Black Man's World, the Red Man's World and the Yellow Man's World. His recommendation was the extermination of all but the Nordic portion of the White Man's world and a handful of racial "inferiors" to serve as servants and slaves to the ubermenschen. Also, for those who think that it was just Rockefeller Republicans who were enthusiastic for PP's agenda, bear in mind that Barry Goldwater's first wife, Peggy, was a member of PP's national board of directors from 1941 or so to her death in the mid-1970s.

Slicing and dicing sentient babies and turning them into a one or two pound bundle of bleeding chopped meat is what PP has always been about. If they were honest, their name would be Premeditated Infanticide.

[toenail]

Some online reading:

"The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy," by Lothrop Stoddard, A.M., Ph.D. (Harvard)

"The Pivot of Civilization," by Margaret Sanger.

[Republic of Texas]

" Planned Parenthood funding threatened [Why is it tax-funded to being with?] "

Because we live in a socialist country

[Republic of Texas]

" Planned Parenthood helps suppress minority births. That's why they were founded, and that's what they've always aimed to do. Title X was sponsored by Spookdaddy Bush, aided by Rockefeller Republicans, who make no real secret of their goal to mold humanity into the image of the white northern-European producer/consumer. "

WOW. Whatever you do, don't let us wonder, prove it for the world to see. (the sarcasm impaired my need translation help here)

[Notwithstanding]

Its official: you are a product of our shitty culture.

[Notwithstanding]

Repeat: you are a product of our shitty culture. No attack against your hominem. Its the shitty culture you succumbed to.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Wenham said Right To Life's ideology is overshadowing health care issues.

I don't think health care is an area where we can experiment for religious and political reasons.

Mark Bertler, executive director of the Michigan Association for Local Public Health, wrote in August 2001 to the chairman of the House committee considering the bill. He wrote that his board, representing public health departments across the state, opposed it.

"The board is concerned that this legislation may put Michigan's successful family planning and pregnancy prevention programs at risk.

Seems to me that if a woman can give birth, in all probability she is in very good 'reproductive health'.

Orwell saw them coming a loooong time ago.

[He Rides A White Horse]

ping

[He Rides A White Horse]

What makes you think that distributing condoms is NOT "health care?" Think STD's. And what's wrong with enjoying a healthy sex life without the danger of unwanted pregnancies?

Maybe killing the woman after such an encounter would present no problems to you either. Pregnancy avoided.

So the sins of the past live on? Is that what you're saying? Gee, you must be 100% behind reparations for victims of slavery. Maybe PP's "victims" should get reparations too?

...or more accurately, perhaps abortion should be viewed today the same way that slavery is. Morally wrong.

I don't particularly care who founded PP or why. As well as I can determine TODAY, they appear to be serving the public interest.

Your word isn't law. Back up your assertation.

So, to you, the words "family planning" means abortions only? You think that folks don't go to PP with fertility problems? You think PP does not provide educational services, pre-natal care, or a host of other services that have nothing to do with abortion? Or is it that you just can't see past the abortion part? (Now it's YOUR turn to be "honest.")

A rational person would no more turn to PP for these sort of things anymore than they would turn to Hillary Clinton for a healthcare plan.

....and I certainly have no interest in engaging in a moral debate about abortion.

I wouldn't try, either.

Go ahead… have the baby… and if you don't want it… give it to a gay couple to adopt. There, that will spare us thousands of abortions per year.

(laughing)

[bvw]

You seem to love in being studiously uninformed. When it comes to being intimate with knowledge you certainly need no condom, as you are chaste and practise complete abstinence.

[toenail]

"WOW. Whatever you do, don't let us wonder, prove it for the world to see. (the sarcasm impaired my need translation help here)"

You could start with the link in post 18. You could even (gasp!) try to think, "If someone openly supports promotic the eugenic betterment of the healthy white race, then I ought to be able to go to my favorite search engine and verify it for myself." Like:

http://www.google.com/search?q=rockefeller+eugenics.
Or http://www.google.com/search?q=bush+eugenics.
Or http://www.google.com/search?q=carnegie+eugenics.
Or http://www.google.com/search?q=harriman+eugenics.

I like a good conspiracy theory. Here's my favorite: some bogeyman is making the American aristocracy say and do things that they really don't mean.

[IM2Phat4U]

Another reason to defund Planned Parenthood:

Pro-choice Planned Parenthood will also likely end up spending nearly $18 million on Al Gore’s behalf this election year, directing persuasion phone calls and mailings to more than 2 million “compassionate conservative” women the group identified in surveys earlier this year. Additionally, Planned Parenthood ran $8 million worth of T.V. ads in nine key battleground states.

Story here.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Hear, hear.

Let's have more money from government "slush funds" (otherwise known as 'tax surpluses'), from which the Democrats in turn funnel to their pet groups to attack opposition candidates.

[Tribune7]

Orwell saw them coming a loooong time ago

Yes, he did.

[Tribune7]

Pro-choice Planned Parenthood will also likely end up spending nearly $18 million on Al Gore’s behalf this election year,

Great point.

[gore3000]

It is unbelievable into what contortions the writer goes to in order to make the reader go through tons of propaganda before he can get to find out what the bill says. The guy should be fired for illiteracy, let alone bias.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Pro-choice Planned Parenthood will also likely end up spending nearly $18 million on Al Gore’s behalf this election year

This is only the tip of the iceberg........organizations masquerading under the guise of "public health providers" or "educational institutions" who are nothing but taxpayer funded attack dogs for the DNC.

[gore3000]

"Like it or not, Planned Parenthood is a public health organization. "

Garbage. Every doctor is a public health organization, that does not make them eligible for government funds however. The degenerate murderers at Planned Parenthood however constantly break the law by calling just about every abortion they do "to save the life of the mother" when those creeps would not know more about the woman than that she is pregnant. These people are not just murderers but also constantly flout the law.

[jackbill]

Someday people are going to realize that Planned Parenthood is carrying out the objective of its founder, Margaret Sanger, i.e. to wipe out the non-white races.

Sure, they'll take a few white people along with them, but they just consider them "collateral damage".

[gore3000]

change the legal definition of “public health,” then I respectfully suggest that you get to work.

Yes, how? Start a revolution? The criminals in the SC made a mockery of our Constitution by declaring abortion a right and taking the matter out of democratic politics.

[He Rides A White Horse]

It is unbelievable into what contortions the writer goes to in order to make the reader go through tons of propaganda before he can get to find out what the bill says.

You expected no less. Or more, rather.

[toenail]

ping to another thread

[MHGinTN]

Serial killing in the name of public health! Amazing, isn't it? And there are too many people willing to accept that lie in order to keep their options open if they just might need to hire a serial killing. Public health?... Since when is serial killing listed in that category?... Since 1973! Killing is improving health, don'tcha know!

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

Roe v. Wade, if strictly interpreted, would prohibit public funding for abortion since public funding for abortion is a form of societal intervention in reproduction - - the very thing prohibited by Roe v. Wade.

[He Rides A White Horse]

"Every doctor" is a practitioner, not a freestanding, tax-free "public health organization." If you have evidence of PP's complicity in murder (or any other criminality), then I suggest that you contact your local law enforcement agency.

Again, a woman capable of giving birth points to a healthy reproductive system in all probability. I can sense your smugness as you typed 'public health organization' within the quotes; indeed you folks have become bold in your application of Orwellian newspeak.

If you have evidence of PP's complicity in murder

Just do us a favor and keep documenting your crimes. Your ideological cousins made the same mistake.

[MHGinTN]

How about some reasonable scissors control measures? Think they would limit the serial killing technique known as partial birth abortion? Wonder where the trigger lock would go on the scissors, to prevent the 'healthcare provider' from stabbing the little one in the back of the head, then spreading the blades to insert the cannula?

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

The so-called empowerment of women and rights of women have been appropriated by a few to mean rights of the few and no longer means an individual woman’s right to equal treatment. Some would emphasize the "inalienable right" of women to decide whether or not to bear a child. This has the effect of defining women as reproductive units rather than as human beings. Real women’s rights would emphasize greater opportunities for education and employment instead of emphasizing a cult of fertility which leads to economic dependency on men and the rest of society, including homosexual men and women who do not reproduce.

The inaccuracies concerning the political economy of sex as portrayed by pro-"choice" advocates deserve a thorough review: Reproductive "choice" is made when two heterosexual people decide to engage in adult relations, not after the fact. The desire to have children is a heterosexual desire. Provided it is a consenting relationship, no woman is forced to become pregnant. Modern science and capitalism (see: Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae) have provided methods to give women pre-emptive power over the forces of nature. No woman has control over her body; only nature does. It is modern Western Civilization that gives women power over nature, not Roe v. Wade. [Incidentally, Roe v. Wade, if strictly interpreted, would prohibit public funding for abortion since public funding for abortion is a form of societal intervention in reproduction - - the very thing prohibited by Roe v. Wade.] One may reply Roe v. Wade is part of a larger good called "women’s rights," but this is really a disguise, consigning other women (those who don’t reproduce or those who oppose abortion) to second class citizenship.

This topic is applicable to homosexuality, both the male and female variety, as well as to sexual crimes. The choice to engage in any type of sexual activity is an individual’s, provided of course, he or she is not victim of a sexual assault. It is absurd to claim the rapist has no control over his actions and it is equally ridiculous to say a homosexual does not have a choice not to involve him or herself with another. The same is true for heterosexual females - - being a woman is not an excuse for making poor choices. The idea that "the choice to have an abortion should be left up to a woman" does not take into account the lack of a choice to pay for such services rendered: The general public is forced to pay massive subsidies for other people sex lives. Emotive claims that the decision to have an abortion is a private one is refuted by the demands of those same people who want public funding for their private choices and/or mistakes.

An adult male or female can be sent to the penitentiary for engaging in carnal pleasures with a minor. One female schoolteacher had become the focus of national attention because she produced a child with her juvenile student. She went to prison while pregnant the second time from the very same child student. Courts allowing a minor female to have an abortion without parental consent or notification can destroy evidence of a felony (such as molestation, rape or incest). Those courts and judges therein have become complicit in the destruction of evidence and are possible accessories in the commission of a felony.

Another source of amazement is the concept of those who hold candlelight vigils for heinous murderers about to be executed, a large number of whom think it is acceptable to murder an unborn child without the benefit of a trial. Is the "right to life" of one responsible for much murder and mayhem more important than that of a truly innocent unborn child? Perhaps we should call capital punishment "post-natal abortion" and identify abortion as a "pre-natal death sentence" or "pre-natal summary execution." Your "reproductive freedom" is my economic and environmental tyranny.