From Liberation News:
Originally posted on VotePSL. Statement by the La Riva-Puryear presidential campaign.
We condemn in strongest terms the attempt of a group of extreme right-wing politicians in the House and Senate to hold the government budget hostage or force the defunding of Planned Parenthood health services.
This extreme right-wing campaign against Planned Parenthood, a major provider of health care for women, was sparked by a dishonest and manipulative video attack on the reproductive rights organization. Actors posing as medical researchers secretly videotaped a conversation with a Planned Parenthood doctor about fetal tissue donation for research purposes. A lengthy discussion was selectively edited down to 8 minutes and used to advance the ludicrous claim that Planned Parenthood was involved in selling fetal tissue for profit.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Any fees received by Planned Parenthood for donated fetal tissue are used to cover the additional expenses involved in preserving and transporting the tissue. Fetal tissue research, like abortion itself, is legal. Such research has contributed to lifesaving medical advances.
However, the extreme right-wing politicians in the House and Senate, and those involved in the Republican presidential primary, have seized on this video and are trying to make political hay of it, with investigations and hearings, and now the threat to shut down the government if funding for Planned Parenthood is continued.
It is important to realize that federal funding for abortion services is already prohibited, ever since the 1975 Hyde Amendment. What would defunding Planned Parenthood mean for women?
Only 3% of Planned Parenthood services involve abortion. The remaining 97% include sex education, contraception, cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection screening and treatment. For poor and low income women, Planned Parenthood often serves as a primary medical care provider.
The hateful video campaign against Planned Parenthood has already led to a violent act of terrorism against a Planned Parenthood clinic in Pullman, Washington. Just a few weeks after an anti-abortion rally of 500 people outside the clinic, someone threw an incendiary device into the building on Sept. 4 The clinic building was destroyed.
There is no meaningful difference between the right-wing politicians scheming to hold the federal budget hostage in order to shut down Planned Parenthood, and terrorists who firebomb a women’s health clinic in order to shut it down.
The heroic doctors, nurses and other workers at Planned Parenthood in Pullman have refused to abandon the women they serve. They have set up a tent in the parking lot where they are answering questions, helping with prescriptions and handing out condoms. They will not back down in the face of terror and they are getting a lot of support from the community, which like most people in the U.S. support reproductive rights. We support these brave workers and stand in solidarity with them.
You’re right. My apologies. They can still seriously suck a big fat one though, and please don’t take offense on behalf of the gay population.
Deez, that’s unfair. I’m pretty sure mentally-challenged individuals could do a much better job in Congress than Republicans.
Funding is fungible. Republican politicians are retards.
Thane: I did not intend to suggest that even a majority of the Republicans wanted to de-fund ALL PP funding, merely the very small portion that goes to fund abortion. That’s why I said, “Obama will decide to veto the bills because they do not fund abortions with Planned Parenthood.”
Obama wants to make it look like ALL PP funding is at stake. I don’t think that’s plausible.
It serves their purposes better as a talking point.
Jim I would agree that such a plan would be effective if more than 50% of Congress actually sincerely favored eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood. I do not believe that is the case.
If we are going to spend time fantasizing about currently improbable scenarios, I’d rather they involve all of these loathsome characters from both wings of the establishment party funding all of their schemes by begging rather than borrowing and stealing.
Paulie: I am well aware that the news media tries very hard to put the blame for any government shutdown on the Republicans in Congress. And since “public opinion” is largely formed precisely by that media propaganda, it is by no means surprising that blame accrues to the ones that the media wants to blame. This was easy when the Democrats were in control of both houses of Congress; harder when the Republicans controlled the House, and should be harder still now that the Republicans control both houses.
I really think Congress should fund half of the budget in a bill, and when it passes fund another quarter of the budget in a bill, then one eighth of the budget, then a 16th, etc, etc. At some point, Obama will decide to veto the bills because they do not fund abortions with Planned Parenthood. But if Obama decides to fund the FIRST bill, funding ONE HALF of the budget, ostensibly due to the lack of PP funding, everyone will know that the blame clearly lies with him: He is clearly trying to shut down the government when there is no necessity to do so.
Via Steve Chapman at Reason Hit and Run:
“Caught on camera”…except the film was doctored. Carly Fiorina claimed the film showed a squirming fetus on a table, but that was spliced into the Planned Parenthood film from some other incident long ago. The inserted bit was called “stock footage” by most press accounts.
You’re not necessarily wrong, but past experience shows that the media and the public as revealed by opinion polls generally sides with presidents in these manufactured showdowns.
Actually, to me, it looks like the DEMOCRATS are the ones “threatening a government shutdown”. Congress is entitled to write whatever it wants into a budget bill: The choice of whether or not to SIGN that bill is that of the President. In principle, Congress could sequentially fund the entire budget by a large number of individual bills, which may or may not end in one funding Planned Parenthood. If Obama WANTS to shut down the government, he might do so at any point, but the proper blame is with him, not the Congress. Typically, now, Congress writes one (or a relatively small number) of bills. Splitting the budget into an increasingly large number of separate bills ought to make it harder for Obama to force PP funding, but the blame still is with Obama for trying to do so.
Full disclosure: I am completely pro-choice. However, the recent misconduct by PP staff, caught on camera, will logically result in blowback, including de-funding of abortion services. There are probably many services PP should continue to provide, and the funding for them will presumably continue to be offered, but that’s not enough for Obama.