I’m Standing with Planned Parenthood
The House voted to bar Planned Parenthood from federal funding on 2-17-11. They cut funding for HIV tests, cancer screenings, birth control, and more, putting millions of women and families at risk. We can’t let it go unanswered. It’s time for you and me to stand with Planned Parenthood. Sign the open letter to the reps who voted for this bill — and to the senators who still have a chance to stop it.
http://www.istandwithplannedparenthood.org/
Yes, this is real. The National Right to Life Committee and StopTheAbortionAgenda.com is strongly in favor of this amendment. Nuff said. I signed the Planned Parenthood petition.
Though it’s doubtful the bill can really stand… Here’s some snippets from OpenCongress Blog. Read the whole article there.
…
First, the Senate, which is still controlled by Democrats, will never agree to this. Some Republicans – namely Sen. Olympia Snowe [R, ME] and Sen. Susan Collins [R, ME] – have even said that they would oppose an attempt to block Planned Parenthood from receiving funding. Senate Democrats are confident they have the votes to block this.The second problem is that it is clearly unconstitutional. Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution forbids Congress from passing bills of attainder, i.e. laws that punish a specific individual or group that have not been given a judicial trial. The Republicans passed a similar bill of attainder last year against the community organizing group ACORN that resulted in the federal government being sued. The Republicans may want to repeat that, but nobody else does.
One more thing to be clear on here. Planned Parenthood does not receive federal funding for abortion services. That has been against the law since 1974. They currently receive funds for other health care services, like cancer screening and family planning. But abortion services are subsidized exclusively by private donors. This amendment is about killing Planned Parenthood, not about blocking public abortion funding. That’s already blocked.
…
So you think that the Constitution somewhere gives Congress the right to tax people at the point of a gun and then hand that money over to a private group?
Whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life, whether you’re pro-contraception or anti-contraception, I find it hard to understand why you think that Planned Parenthood should get funding from involuntary citizens.
I’m very much pro-ASPCA, pro-Habitat-for-Humanity, and pro-Catholic-Church, but I would never violate your rights by threatening you in order to compel you to support my personal charities.
> One more thing to be clear on here. Planned Parenthood does not receive federal funding for abortion services. That has been against the law since 1974.
Money is fungible.
Would you be OK with the federal government giving money to the Catholic Church if it promised only to spend that on heating churches and repairing their stonework as needed? …or would you realize that every dollar freed up from the physical maintenance fund is one more dollar that can be put into recruiting, propoganda, etc. ?
>So you think that the Constitution somewhere gives Congress the right
>to tax people at the point of a gun and then hand that money over to a private group?
Like you, I am for smaller government. I don’t think targeting Planned Parenthood is a productive use of our arguing time to reducing the size of government. Planned Parenthood received $88.7 million from the Feds in 2008 according to the stoptheabortionagenda.com article. If you’re looking for smaller government, better to chip away at larger, less controversial programs. For example, NASA has an $18 billion yearly budget.
>I find it hard to understand why you think that Planned Parenthood
>should get funding from involuntary citizens.
Our society has deemed that people who walk into Emergency Rooms should get treatment whether they can pay or not. Planned Parenthood provides similar, less urgent care services that are administered far less expensively than an Emergency Room setting.
>Money is fungible.
>Would you be OK with the federal government giving money to the
>Catholic Church if it promised only to spend that on heating churches
>and repairing their stonework as needed? …or would you realize that
>every dollar freed up from the physical maintenance fund is one more
>dollar that can be put into recruiting, propoganda, etc. ?
Our democratically elected (rope!) government has decided that they want to pay Planned Parenthood for some services. If you want to organize a Catholic group to perform those services, go ahead and bid for the job.
And then there’s that last word of yours, “propaganda”. I believe the word should be “education”. Let me put some words in your mouth:
BOY: Couldn’t Mummy have worn some sort of pesssary?
TJIC: Not if we’re going to remain members of the fastest growing religion in the world, my boy.
What I find ironic is that Planned Parenthood is one of the most successful organizations in preventing abortions. Only 3% of their funds go for abortion services. Much of the remaining funds go for reproductive health services that enable people to avoid unintended pregnancy in the first place, thereby avoiding potential abortions. Cutting off their funding, allegedly to stop abortions, seems to me a totally cynical and counterproductive action.
In addition, the funding given to Planned Parenthood actually reduces the expense of government. Many of the clients are low-income individuals, who would need welfare, Medicaid, and other government assistance if they were to have unintended babies. To those who argue that their tax dollars should not go into supporting my personal charities, I would respond that I do not want my tax dollars to go to welfare for a woman who could have had a career if she had not had to care for a baby she didn’t want in the first place.
Ugh. Done. OBVS.