Read that carefully. They’re not even asserting that those millions couldn’t find a provider, they’re merely saying that they’d “have to search for” one, probably because any claim larger than that is not supportable. (You don’t think they’d claim LESS than they can back up about their necessity to society?) Apparently now having to use the phone book or a call an agency for a referral is a violation of civil rights.

I’m not denying that those services might be hard to find for some of those millions, but you’ll notice that Planned Parenthood isn’t even claiming that, because it isn’t well enough established. I would guess there are very few places in Indiana that have PP clinics but no public health clinics or private doctors that accept public insurance.

The principle really is that hard, David. It is “an agency which deals in things destructive to people and society should not be funded regardless of what good things it does, because that compromises their value to society.” If they want to continue to do the good, they’re free to. They just need to knock of the “killing people” part.

And no one’s entertaining that, as far as I know. You just aren’t following the argument.

Q: What does Planned Parenthood do with the tax dollars they receive?

Nationally, Planned Parenthood’s doctors and nurses provide preventive care to three million people a year. The effort to bar Planned Parenthood health centers from receiving any federal funds would shatter the country’s public health safety net and jeopardize women’s health. Without Planned Parenthood’s 800-plus health centers, millions of women will have no place to go for basic, preventive health care. In fact, 73 percent of Planned Parenthood health centers are in a rural or medically underserved area.

Planned Parenthood plays a vital role in securing the health of women, especially those who have few resources. More than 90 percent of our work consists of family planning and preventive health services.

Every year, the doctors and nurses in our 800-plus health centers provide:

*affordable contraception for nearly 2.5 million patients
*nearly 1 million cervical cancer screenings
*830,000 million breast exams
*nearly 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including a half million HIV tests

Planned Parenthood helps save taxpayers money. We know from experience that public investments in family planning and preventive health care pay for themselves. Every dollar invested in family planning saves nearly $4 down the line.

Planned Parenthood saves lives. Our services also provide a lifeline for millions of women who lack other sources of basic health care. Six in ten patients who receive care at a women’s health center like Planned Parenthood consider it their main source of health care. If Planned Parenthood didn’t receive this funding for health services millions would have to search for a provider of these lifesaving services they need.

It is difficult to see how the fact that Planned Parenthood provides abortion services would interfere with their ability to do cancer screenings or STD testing. Although many of its opponents think of PP as an abortion provider, it is primarily a contraception provider. The idea that it might sabotage its contraception operation to generate more abortions is just too bizarre to entertain.

And not, I don’t mean they provide “bad contraception services” in hopes of causing abortions — however, human beings being what they are, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that it has happened. I mean that when you go in seeking help in dealing with a pregnancy, PP is “more interested” (whatever that may mean) in providing abortions than in adoption services or other services relating to the bearing of the child.

Are you implying that Planned Parenthood might deliberately do a bad job of providing contraception services in the hopes that women would get pregnant and have abortions?

How can the members of an organization that does not dstribute its profits amongst its members benefit from one outcome of pregancy, rather than another?

Surely, the realargument against funding Planned Parenthood is that its policy (1) promotes muder and (2) its teachings are against public policy

Since abortion is legal (it shouldn’t be, but it is), if Planned Parenthood wishes to continue functioning, let it do what any other private entity has to do, get it’s own private funding.