I thought President Obama’s executive order was supposed to eliminate the promotion of abortion by the new health-care bill?
Comes this line, in the Detroit News:
An early sign of health care reform’s impact is Planned Parenthood’s decision to open a new Oakland County clinic within the next 18 months, adding to 15 locations, including Detroit, Warren and Livonia. Unlike other Detroit area centers, the new location is likely to include abortion services.
[Planned Parenthood President Cecile] Richards and Lori Lamerand, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Mid and South Michigan, are ramping up for a boom in birth control and other reproductive services—what Lamerand calls “an onslaught” of women poised to gain new access to reproductive health care.
An onslaught of women, poised to gain. An onslaught. What a word to use,
But the point remains the ascription of the new clinic to the impact of the health-care reform. Didn’t Planned Parenthood just get done insisting that the bill didn’t do this?
April 29th, 2010 | 11:37 am
“I thought President Obama’s executive order was supposed to eliminate the promotion of abortion by the new health-care bill?”
You may be the only one.
April 29th, 2010 | 11:54 am
I believe that Planned Parenthood has been quite upfront all along about the effect of Obamacare on federal abortion funding.
April 29th, 2010 | 12:00 pm
The insurance reform bill (comprehensive healthcare reform is still a ways off) did not — and this was the point — do anything to the long-standing Federal law prohibiting Federal funding of abortions. So your point is incorrect — and misleading. But one of the effects of the insurance reform bill is the mandate that everyone purchase insurance. Many insurance providers cover abortion, so it’s reasonable to assume that among the 30 million new people in the market for health insurance, there will be people who subscribe to a plan that covers abortion … and among those newly covered by such plans, some will want to avail themselves of the procedure.
It’s a shame that careful discussion of the issue was sacrificed on the altar of gatcha politics.
I expect better from First Things.
April 29th, 2010 | 12:46 pm
Also, not commonly recognized here, but Planned Parenthood’s main focus is on contraception and they do expect to fill an increased need for artifical birth control. “Inclusion of abortion services” does not translate into government funded abortion. PP would not be excluded by regulations from providing artifical contraception services.
April 29th, 2010 | 1:28 pm
I may be mistaken here, but it has been my understanding that abortion is a major profit center for PP. I’m not so sure about artificial birth control
April 29th, 2010 | 1:34 pm
This informative page , http://www.grtl.org/plannedparenthood.asp, from Georgia Right to Life gives more information on Planned Parenthood (you might note that 54% of women having abortions used contraception that month – from a Guttmacher report). Revenue analysis for for Planned Parnethood as an industry is revealing: http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=7791. In the context of the Health Care legislation one particular concern is the billions of dollars funding Community Health Clinics (CHC)…note an example here http://www.co.san-diego.ca.us/cnty/bos/sup2/help/healthclinics.pdf of Planned Parenthood listed as a CHC. In a legal analysis,http://www.usccb.org/healthcare/03-25-10Memo-re-Executive-Order-Final.pdf, a very strong case is made showing that funding will be available for abortion at CHCs….Connecting the dots one could guess that Planned Parenthood is postioning for a windfall.
April 29th, 2010 | 1:50 pm
Silas:
Perhaps something like this is what you expected?
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2010/03/23/a-final-faq-on-healthcare-and-abortion/
You’re right, the healthcare reform bill does not do anything to the longstanding prohibition against federal funding for abortion. What it manifestly does do is find clever ways around that prohibition. Ergo, PP is gearing up for its little harvest.
April 29th, 2010 | 2:07 pm
You are half right Mr. Miles. There will be a harvest but it will not be little. Not to worry, the “insurance reform bill” or whatever Grok wants to call it “did not do anything to” the prohibition against federal funding of abortion so to point out that abortions will increase as a result of its enactment is just a game of gotcha. Right you are Grok but the gotchas to be sacrificed will be the the aborted babies. Lets carefully discuss that inconvenient fact.
April 29th, 2010 | 3:43 pm
Of course it will be little. They’re little, and therefore they don’t count. (there are women who actually argue that their greater size means the baby is not important. they seem not to have noticed the size differential between them and men.)
April 29th, 2010 | 4:46 pm
@Brian Edward Miles: thank you for your comment and the informative link. Certainly more helpful than the thinly veiled posturing of ROB and Mary.
No wonder we can’t get anywhere on the issue of abortion in this country, with pitchfork-weilding thought police on both sides of the issue ready to squelch even the most modest of “third way” discussions.
April 29th, 2010 | 4:59 pm
Grok, you must think Mary and I are, well, Stupak.
April 29th, 2010 | 9:42 pm
Planned Parenthood’s main objective is to give underserved women and men reproductive healthcare. They are not an abortion for profit organization. Maybe the best advice here is to go spend an afternoon in a Planned Parenthood clinic and see what really goes on there.
April 30th, 2010 | 12:51 am
@ROB … that got me grinning. :)
No, not Stupak … but it’s frustrating that someone always takes the discussion to the worst possible place — almost immediately. As a moderate/centrist on this and many other issues, I see a viable middle ground — one that would end with fewer abortions, I believe. But middle ground appears to be unacceptable to the majority of voices on this issue. For most, it’s all-or-nothing. You’re either pro-life (the most annoying moniker ever) or pro (what?) death? You’re either “respect a woman’s choice” or (apparently) rape her in effigy.
It’s tiring.
April 30th, 2010 | 7:03 pm
An executive order does not mean squat. It can be changed at any time so yes Obama did lie because he was not honest about the order in the first place.
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