■ 20 February 2011 | 5:00 AM
Planned parenthood saves money
ONCE AGAIN, Planned Parenthood has come under attack. Congress is considering legislation that would prohibit the program from receiving any federal funding. This time there is a real risk that millions of women could lose access to basic primary and preventive care.
If we want to cut government spending, then we need to educate our youth about safe sex and the options that are available. Teen pregnancies cost taxpayers more than $9 billion every year. Planned Parenthood provides an environment for people to seek the medical care they need.
There are more than 3 million unintended pregnancies every year, and more than 800,000 are teen pregnancies. This is not the time to cut funding to Planned Parenthood. In fact, for every dollar invested in family planning, taxpayers save nearly $4.
House Republicans want to completely gut women's health care, proposing elimination of the national family planning program, Title X. It saves money. Federally and state-funded family planning programs aid in preventing nearly 973,000 unintended pregnancies each year. Without Title X, Planned Parenthood and other crucial community health providers won't receive funding for things like cancer screenings, family planning, contraception, STI testing and treatment and annual exams.
Our local Planned Parenthood affiliate does not receive any state or federal funding. However, Virginia Del. Bob Marshall is once again working to 'defund' Planned Parenthood affiliates in Virginia.The only state funding that Planned Parenthood receives from the commonwealth is Medicaid reimbursements, which do not pay for abortion but do pay for vital prenatal care.
No other organization does more to prevent the need for abortion than Planned Parenthood. The programs provide women with the tools and education to take control of their sexual health. We need to stand up against this attempt to defund women's health care.
Laura Marko
Norfolk
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For Mr. Murphy
I fully understood your challenge and answered it. There are horror stories all over America about PP and their poor record taking care of women, poor and otherwise. I guess the bottom line is you could not care less about whether these PP clinics meet health care standards. It seems logical to me that anyone who is promoting safe, clinical health care for women would want to make sure that the facilities they go to meet at least the MINIMUM standards for most facilities that offer similar care.
Would you let your wife or daughters go to a facility that doesn't meet these standards? Would you go to a "doc in the box" that failed to meet these MINIMUM standards? Your hypocrisy is unbelievable. When people fear that making these PP clinics meet the same standards that other health clinics have to already comply with, it shows the weak argument to continually support unfettered abortion. If Roe v. Wade ever gets before the Supreme Court, science that wasn't available in the 1970's will trump the argument that this "lump of fetal tissue" is really a life forming in the womb, with a beating heart, arms, legs, hands, fingers, head, eyes, and a brain, something that many who support this vile form of birth control are missing. Murder in the name of choice is really tough to support when the sonogram reveals the true shape of that young life.
Like most of the very active
opponents of women's choice you seem not to know what Roe v Wade decided. It was a very practical and realistic decision based on a trimester analysis and the recognition that the transformation from zygote to human person is a gradual one. In the first trimester the state cannot restrict a woman's right to choose. In the third trimester states have the power to impose very restrictive laws to protect the unborn. I believe that most if not all state have such laws so horror stories of mad doctors murdering otherwise viable infants in utero are, if true, stories of crimes being committed. Of course, political zealots deliberately muddy the waters when they lump together morning-after-pills with such horror stories. As to medical facility standards, again the challenge was to relate the width of PP corridors - the stated basis for challenging their right to help women - to even a single person coming to harm. You haven't even tried on that one.
So you answer the question I posed
If you are so concerned about womens health, why wouldn't you support that all facitities that perform surgical procedures meet minimum health facility standards? You seem centered on the doorway and hall width, that was the simplest example. There are many they don't meet. Many don't have autoclaves to sterilize their instruments, no certified surgical nurses in the surgical suite, and the list goes on and on. What do you need to require minimum safety standards, a bevy of dead women?
And of course my argument is centered around the fact PP should not receive tax dollars for their clinics. I don't really care what women do with their bodies or babies as long as I don't have to pay for their mistakes.
I don't support
bogus requirements intended to stop poor women from getting the services they need. Pretending that this is about anything else is intellectually dishonest and you know it.
Interesting that Ms. Marko
Interesting that Ms. Marko did not mention that 19 of 21 PP centers in Virginia do not meet minimum licensing standards for health care facilities. Therefore, I guess they really do not care about women and children's health, all they really care about is abortion. Emergency transport cannot get a gurney in the front door so any woman or child that needs emergency care would have to be carried outside to be placed on a gurney.
What studies does Ms. Marko use to get her numbers she so easily quotes? Most likely one provided by PP. Since Roe v. Wade we have been scolded about women's bodies, women's rights, women's choice, so if all that is right, then use women's money to correct their mistakes.
Aren't you pro death folks happy that your mother didn't feel the same way?
Funny you should
refer to people who believe that women should have control of their own bodies as "pro death". Funny, because the same people who are most adamantly opposed to women's rights are almost always big supporters of capital punishment, pre-emptive wars and unlimited access to deadly weapons. Not always - but almost always. Funny.
The red herring about PP not meeting medical facility standards is just that -- a red herring. It is another part of the rightwing drive to unfund their efforts. Cite one case where ANYONE has suffered because of the width of the halls at a PP facility.
I guess you don't read much
The national news and many stations have provided the proof you requested but apparently you only watch and read the liberal talking points. Philadelphia Womens Center was a death trap, babies just a week shy of natural birth had their spines sniped with scissors to kill them. Women were mutilated and this went on for 30 years. Hundreds of cases have been exposed in the press over the last few months. The PP centers in Virginia participated in the Lila Rose fraud expose to provide abortions and STI assistance to people who told them they were using minors for prostitution, some of them touted as illegal immigrants.
If PP is as good as you claim then it could and should be self supporting and not in need of $360 Billion in tax dollars. So if you think it is so good, all you pro death folks can stroke them a check.
Equating the death penalty to abortion is quite a stretch. Abortion denies the unborn a chance to live, prosper, and achieve while the death penalty is only given to the worst of criminals who have forcibly taken the life of an innocent person. Oh maybe I do see the connection.
"denies the unborn a chance to live..."
"denies the unborn a chance to live, prosper, and achieve while the death penalty is only given to the worst of criminals who have forcibly taken the life of an innocent person" James says.
Tell us how much your supposed pro-lifers fought to save the life of living baby Sun Hudson who was deliberately killed against his mother's wishes because he was an inconvenience to the state.
Tell us how Sun Hudson was "the worst of criminals" deserving of death.
I guess you did not understand the challenge I threw down -
Again, cite one example of the width of PP corridors harming anyone. Regurgitating horror stories about Abortions Gone Bad does not meet that challenge. Any and all medical and even dental procedures can generate horrors sometimes.
There is an interesting bias underlying your second paragraph - if something is not supported by the free market then it must not be good. Yeah. I see your point. Why don't the poor women whom PP serves just go to a regular hospital and pay some giant corporation some exhorbitant amount for the services they need? Also, I wonder where you got the $360 billion figure from? I assume it was a typo and not the mindless repetition of a rightwing lie. $360 Million may be about the right figure for public contributions.
As to the Death penalty - would that it were always just. Just don't claim to be "pro-life" and other people "pro-death" if you continue to support it in spite of all the evidence of how badly it is administered.
So does War
"Abortion denies the unborn a chance to live, prosper, and achieve . . ." So does war but I'll bet you supported the massive bombings and invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.