House votes to block Planned Parenthood funding
Friday, February 18, 2011 at 1:25 pm
- 11 Comments
The House voted Friday to block federal funding to Planned Parenthood — a move Rep. Michele Bachmann has repeatedly advocated for — passing the measure by a margin of 240 to 185.
The amendment, sponsored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), has been added to the Continuing Resolution (H.R. 1) to fund the federal government through September.
If the resolution goes into law, the 95-year-old health care provider will lose funding from the federal government, all of which goes to family planning and reproductive services under Title X, and none of which goes to funding abortions.
It will also eliminate the entire Title X program, which was founded in 1970 and is the only federal grant program dedicated solely to providing individuals with comprehensive family planning and preventive health services, particularly to low-income families, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs. Preventative health services include breast and cervical cancer screenings, HIV prevention education, pregnancy diagnosis and counseling.
In fiscal year 2010, Congress appropriated approximately $317 million for family planning activities supported under Title X, 90 percent of which was used for clinical family planning services, according to the OPA. In 2008, 4,500 community-based clinics (including health departments, university health centers, faith-based organizations, public and private nonprofit agencies, and tribal organizations) received grants from Title X that went to approximately 5 million people, the OPA said. In roughly 75 percent of U.S. counties, at least one clinic receives Title X funds.
On its website all week, Planned Parenthood posted a message urging supporters to call their representatives to vote against attempts to end Title X funding.
A statement from the organization:
Anti-choice leaders in Congress are forcing a vote on the most dangerous legislative assault on women’s health and Planned Parenthood in our 95-year history. This bill would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood health centers — including funding for birth control, cancer screenings, HIV testing, and more.
The consequences of this bill are clear — and they would be devastating. More women would have unintended pregnancies. Cancer would develop, undiagnosed, in countless women. There is no doubt: cutting off millions of women from care they have no other way to afford places them at risk of sickness and death.
There are 85 local Planned Parenthood affiliates nationwide, which operate more than 820 health centers, according to its website, which also indicates that more than 1.2 million youths and adults participate in Planned Parenthood educational programs every year.
As Pence told Politico earlier this week: “If Planned Parenthood wants to be involved in providing counseling services and HIV testing, they ought not be in the business of providing abortions,” Pence told POLITICO in an interview Tuesday. “As long as they aspire to do that, I’ll be after them.”
Today, the fourth day, the house has been debating the 359-page spending bill. About 600 amendments have been filed on the spending bill.
Once the resolution is passed it will be sent to the Senate for consideration during the week of Feb. 28 and has been given a March 4 deadline.
11 Comments
Comment posted February 18, 2011 @ 10:16 pm
Bachmann and her right-wing Republican “right to life” stooges have now played their hand. How many women will need to suffer and die before their evil and ignorant agenda is rejected?
Comment posted February 19, 2011 @ 7:51 am
If any women “suffer and die” it will be due to the greed of Planned Parenthood and the lack of support from their liberal sponsors.
If PP they really cared, they would treat women whether they could afford the $500 “extraction” fee or not.
Comment posted February 19, 2011 @ 8:26 am
Dennis,
PP DOES treat women who cannot afford the cost of an abortion. They offer services on a sliding scale for low income women who qualify. But again, maybe regular health care providers should work for free if they really cared about their patients. Maybe bankers should work for free if they really cared for the financial well being of their customers. Maybe legislators should work for free if they really cared about their constituents.
Oh…wait.
Comment posted February 19, 2011 @ 12:46 pm
Good. May Planned Parenthood be financially starved into oblivion.
Comment posted February 19, 2011 @ 8:00 pm
LS: What you said is essentially, “Good. May women die of entirely preventable reproductive cancers & illnesses.”
Comment posted February 19, 2011 @ 9:09 pm
LS’s comment reflects exactly what the so-called “right to life” believes: you only have a “right to life” if you are “unborn”. If you are born, you are f’d. What a shallow and frankly sickening view of “life.” If anything, it’s life disaffirming, not life affirming.
LS: my advice: find another cause that fits with your life philosophy- like supporting child abusing priests.
Comment posted February 20, 2011 @ 7:32 am
What progressive eugenics advocate Margaret Sanger envisioned with Planned Parenthood was a means to minimize, if not eliminate the live birth of negro and immigrant babies. You can look it up. Even Ruth Bader Ginsberg assumed that abortion clinics were to be set up to eliminate “people we don’t want too many of.”
It would be insulting to any thinking liberal woman, should any actually exist, that the taxpayers of this country provide the financial means for Ms. Sanger’s mission. It’s no coincidence that most PP “clinics” are in poor neighborhoods.
http://blackgenocide.org/sanger.html
But then, it’s never been a mystery to me who the real racists are in this country.
Comment posted February 20, 2011 @ 10:07 am
The thrust of Justice Ginsberg’s statement is the exact OPPOSITE of what Dennis is portraying.
JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.
In other words, her initial perception had been that abortion was about eugenics and she later came to realize that she was WRONG. But see, that’s the thing with liberals. We can admit when our knee-jerk reaction is incorrect.
Q: When you say that reproductive rights need to be straightened out, what do you mean?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman.
Unfortunately, the government is pushing itself further and further into reproductive rights – and worse, not only is it restricting reproductive choice, which is itself unconstitutional despite 30 years of angry right-wing woman-hate, but it’s actually withdrawing and cutting the resources that low-income women need to have healthy babies! So it’s anti-choicers who are in fact attempting to practice eugenics against disadvantaged populations.
Comment posted February 20, 2011 @ 11:26 pm
This is wealth discrimination and nothing more. Abortion is a legal medical procedure and will remain legal. All this posturing by the conservatives is a ploy to keep the pocket books of the mindless morons in their party open. There is no legal argument based on the American constitution that will ever ban abortion. If you don’t want to get an abortion then don’t get an abortion.
Comment posted February 22, 2011 @ 11:32 am
Dennis and LS…Do you oppose Education and the use of Birth COntrol to reduce the need for an Abortion?
Or are you of the mindset that pregnancy and motherood are mandatory of women just because?
Dennis and LS…Where is your rage when new born children are abused by parents who cannot care for them? Left in toilets to die after birth because the mother had to carry that child and did not want others to know about the pregnancy to begin with?
Your hypocricies know no bounds.
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