Tag Archives: reproductive rights

Watch These Dudes in Congress Tell Planned Parenthood How to Protect Women’s Health

by Eduardo7272 Posted on September 29, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards appeared today before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, in the most recent congressional hearing examining the use of taxpayer funds by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. This was Richards’ first appearance before Congress. She had not been invited to participate in either of the two hearings conducted by the House Judiciary Committee earlier in the month, in the wake of the heavily edited and controversial videos released by anti-abortion activist David Daleiden.

Planned Parenthood receives approximately $450 million annually in federal funds, nearly all of which are reimbursements for women’s health services from programs administered by the Department of Health and Human Services. According to Planned Parenthood, last year 41 percent ($528.4 million) of its revenue came from government health services grants and reimbursements.

“The question before us is: Does this organization—does Planned Parenthood—really need a federal subsidy?” said House Oversight chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “Every time we spend a federal dollar, what we’re doing is pulling money out of somebody’s pocket and we’re giving it to somebody else. What I don’t like, what I don’t want to tolerate, what I don’t want to become numb to is wasting those taxpayer dollars.”

Here are some of the recurring themes from the hearing that attempted to answer his question.

1. Her salary is too high: Chaffetz spent much of his allotted time interrogating Richards about her $590,000 annual salary, which he characterized as “exorbitant.” She corrected him, saying her annual salary is actually $520,000. (Female nonprofit CEOs still make markedly less than male CEOs. In 2013, for example, Laurance Hoagland Jr., chief investment officer of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, made $2.5 million, and John Seffrin, CEO of the American Cancer Society, made $2.1 million.) Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) responded angrily to this inquisition. “The entire time I’ve been in Congress, I’ve never seen a witness beaten up and questioned about their salary,” she said. “Ms. Richards heads a distinguished organization providing health care services to millions of Americans. I find it totally inappropriate and discriminatory.”

2. Her apology was self-incriminating: Several times, Richards was subjected to loud, often aggressive mansplaining about when it is and is not appropriate to issue an apology. Members were referring to a video that PPFA released days after the first sting video in which Richards said, “Our top priority is the compassionate care that we provide. In the sting video, one of our staff members speaks in a way that does not reflect that compassion. This is unacceptable, and I personally apologize for the staff member’s tone and statements.” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) repeatedly asked Richards to justify this. “Why did you apologize?” he asked over and over again. “You can’t have it both ways. If nothing was done wrong, why did you apologize? You don’t apologize if she didn’t say anything that was wrong.”

Richards explained that her apology was more about the setting of the discussion. “I spoke with Dr. Nucatola, and it was inappropriate to have a clinical discussion in a nonconfidential, nonclinical setting,” Richards said. “It was that she used bad judgment to have a clinical discussion in a nonclinical setting.” The conversation in the sting video was over lunch and wine.

3. Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide mammograms: Republican critics of PPFA were also upset that Planned Parenthood clinics don’t provide mammogram services, despite the fact that radiology centers usually offer them because Medicaid reimbursements can’t come close to covering their operational costs. This point seemed to be lost on committee members who considered the lack of mammography as evidence that Planned Parenthood did not really provide women’s health services. Richards explained that when she goes to see her general practitioner and she gets a breast exam, she is referred to a radiologist to get a mammogram. Centers that depend on Medicaid reimbursement are often unable to pay for the equipment and radiologists’ salaries. New 3-D mammography technology is even more expensive. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) saw this as evidence that Planned Parenthood fell short in providing acceptable women’s health services: “Do you acknowledge that community health centers offer a broader range of services, including mammograms?” To this, Richards replied, “I’m not an expert on what all community health centers provide.”

4. Taxpayer dollars are paying for abortions: The repeated expressions of outrage by Republicans over “taxpayer dollars” being used for abortion services was, according to committee member Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Mich.), “exhausting.”

“I know my colleagues are more intelligent than this,” Lawrence said. “This is not a lump sum we give Planned Parenthood. It is a reimbursement.”

Under federal law, no taxpayer dollars are allocated to abortion services. PPFA has submitted its tax filings and reimbursement records, and so far there has been no evidence that it violated this law. That did not stop Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) from expressing concern that “taxpayer dollars are being used to free up services that you provide that are aberrant services in the view of many taxpayers.”

5) Planned Parenthood provides too many abortions: Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) does not understand how the 327,000 abortions Planned Parenthood performed in 2014 amount to only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services. Meadows claimed it was more like 12 percent. But as Richards explained, some patients visit more than once, and for multiple services, bringing the percentage down substantially.

And as my colleague Kevin Drum reported, Chaffetz used a chart from anti-abortion group Americans United for Life that incorrectly claimed that Planned Parenthood’s breast examinations have trended radically downward in recent years, while abortion services have substantially risen. In fact, cancer screenings have declined because, as Richards said, “some of the services, like pap smears, dropped in frequency because of changing medical standards about who should be screened and how often.” Abortion rates for Planned Parenthood have only increased about 2 percent per year since 2006.

6) Planned Parenthood is in cahoots with President Barack Obama: Toward the end of the nearly six-hour hearing, Jordan asked Richards about the internal workings of her staff. “Since the videos, has anyone from HHS, CMS contacted you?” Richards replied that because she has a big staff, she can’t answer that with 100 percent confidence. “Has the Attorney General of the United States Loretta Lynch contacted Planned Parenthood?” Jordan persisted. “Has anyone from the Justice Department contacted Planned Parenthood since the videos surfaced? There are potentially four federal crimes committed here, and all I’m asking is, has the Justice Department contacted you?” Richards repeated that she could not answer his questions with any certainty.

Jordan then escalated his attack. “Have you had any conversations with the president of the United States?” he asked. “Since the videos have surfaced, how many times have you been to the White House? How many times have you been to the White House since Mr. Obama’s been president?” Richards again said she couldn’t be sure, but Jordan was ready with an answer. “Our count shows that you, your board members, and senior staff have been to the White House 151 times in six and a half years.”

Investigations are also ongoing in the House Energy and Commerce Committee and in the House Judiciary Committee. So far, no wrongdoing has been found. Six state investigations that were triggered by the videos have also been closed after finding no evidence that Planned Parenthood violated law.

A subpoena has been issued to anti-abortion activist Daleiden for his investigative materials, and according to Chaffetz, they have been received but not yet opened or examined.

Link: 

Watch These Dudes in Congress Tell Planned Parenthood How to Protect Women’s Health

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, Jason, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Watch These Dudes in Congress Tell Planned Parenthood How to Protect Women’s Health

There Are Thousands of Clinics That Could Replace Planned Parenthood, Right? Nope.

by DamianSpivakovs Posted on September 29, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This week, the Congressional controversy over Planned Parenthood could come to a head as investigations continue through the House of Representatives. Today, Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, will testify before the House Oversight Committee, one of several committees conducting an investigation in the wake of videos from anti-abortion activist David Daleiden, who is also expected to testify in the continuing discussion.

One of the claims they may address has been neatly presented in a map circulating on social media. The graphic claims that there are 13,540 clinics where women can find comprehensive health care, as opposed to a mere 665 Planned Parenthood locations. It has become a popular talking point in the conservative push to defund Planned Parenthood—most notably mentioned by Jeb Bush in the GOP debate earlier this month. The map in question seems to be referring to a list of clinics, organized by state, from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services.

But what the graphic doesn’t mention is that most of the clinics listed don’t even appear to have a certified OB-GYN on staff. The clinics are mostly general practice, meaning they may lack equipment and expertise to deliver reproductive health care to women. It’s not clear what criteria the groups circulating the map used to define viable options to replace Planned Parenthood’s services, and the groups did not respond to requests for comment.

While the clinics on this list do accept Medicaid, they are not set up to take the massive influx of patients that would result from a shutdown of Planned Parenthood. What’s more, many private reproductive health care clinics—those that aren’t represented on the list—don’t take Medicaid at all. That’s because the program pays just a fraction of what private insurers will reimburse.

Planned Parenthood, on the other hand, is set up to handle large numbers of Medicaid patients. Nearly half of all Planned Parenthood patients use Medicaid coverage, and more than a third of women who receive publicly funded family planning care rely on Planned Parenthood.

Mark DeFrancesco, president of the American Congress of Obstetrics and Gynecologists, says it’s common for practitioners not to accept Medicaid patients, because the reimbursement rates can’t come close to offsetting the operating costs of their clinics. “The reimbursement is such that Medicaid just by definition doesn’t pay anywhere near what private insurers pay for OB-GYN visits,” says DeFrancesco.

Sara Rosenbaum, a health law professor at George Washington University, agrees. In a blog post for Health Affairs, she writes that the claim that community clinics could replace Planned Parenthood represents “a fundamental misunderstanding of how the health care system works.”

Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in a report issued earlier this month that if Planned Parenthood were defunded, “as many as 650,000 women in areas without access to other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations” would lose their reproductive health care. And a survey by the Guttmacher Institute found that women often value specialized family planning clinics such as Planned Parenthood over primary care clinics for reasons such as affordability, increased confidentiality, and a greater range of contraceptive options. Guttmacher also reports that in 103 counties, Planned Parenthood is the only “safety net” family planning service, meaning that a large portion of their patients are either uninsured or reliant on Medicaid.

If Planned Parenthood were to lose a third of its entire budget, DeFrancesco warns, “these patients won’t have anywhere else to go.”

Read more:  

There Are Thousands of Clinics That Could Replace Planned Parenthood, Right? Nope.

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There Are Thousands of Clinics That Could Replace Planned Parenthood, Right? Nope.

House Votes to Defund Planned Parenthood

by CorneliBaeza Posted on September 18, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The House on Friday voted 241-to-187 to strip Planned Parenthood of some $500 million in federal family planning funds for a year. The move is intended to keep the public eye on allegations of illegal behavior by Planned Parenthood staffers but remove the possibility of a government shutdown by conservatives bent on defunding the organization.

The vote followed several grueling hearings held by the House Judiciary Committee into the undercover sting videos that allegedly show Planned Parenthood employees selling fetal parts, which would be a violation of federal law. The organization has denied the allegations, and state after state investigating the videos, which are heavily edited, has been found no evidence of wrongdoing. As the October 1 deadline for funding the government approaches, however, several conservative members of Congress, including presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), threatened to block any government funding bill that provided Medicaid or family planning dollars to Planned Parenthood. But it remains to be seen if this latest vote will satisfy conservative elements of the party.

Planned Parenthood is barred by law from using federal funds to provide abortions. The $500 million or so it receives each year from the government allows the group to provide family planning and other reproductive health services to mostly poor women on Medicaid. Ahead of the vote, conservative activists and lawmakers circulated a list of thousands of other family planning providers that could replace Planned Parenthood for the thousands of poor women who use its services. There is ample evidence to suggest that these alternatives to Planned Parenthood do not have the capacity to treat the group’s patients.

The bill now goes to the GOP-held Senate, where it almost certainly faces a filibuster by Democrats in the minority.

Continued here – 

House Votes to Defund Planned Parenthood

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on House Votes to Defund Planned Parenthood

Here’s What the GOP Candidates Had to Say About Reproductive Rights at the Debate

by RenaR37tqbryn Posted on September 17, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The moderators of CNN’s Wednesday night debate didn’t finish their first round of questions for the Republican presidential contenders before talk turned to Planned Parenthood. State after state investigating the explosive but doctored sting videos accusing Planned Parenthood of selling fetal organs has found the allegations—such sales would be illegal—to be false. But that hasn’t stopped the 11 top-ranked GOP candidates from skewering the organization and promising to strip its federal funding. Here’s what they said:

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — CNN corespondent Dana Bash asked Cruz if his determination to shut down the government in order to defund Planned Parenthood was deadly to the Republican ticket for president. “These Planned Parenthood videos are horrifying,” Cruz said. “Planned Parenthood also essentially confesses to multiple felonies…Absolutely we shouldn’t be sending $500 million of taxpayer money to funding an ongoing criminal enterprise, and I’ll tell you, the fact that Republican leadership in both houses has begun this discussion by preemptively surrendering to Barack Obama and saying, ‘We’ll give in because Obama threatens a veto.’ We need to stop surrendering and start standing for our principles.”

Gov. John Kasich of Ohio — Bash asked the governor if he supported Cruz’s strategy to defund Planned Parenthood. “I agree that we should defund Planned Parenthood,” he said. “And in my state, we’re trying to figure out how to get it done.” At the same time, he said, he opposed shutting down the government. “The president of the United States is not going to sign this, and all we’re going to do is shut the government down, and then we’re going to open it up, and the American people are going to shake their heads and say, ‘What’s the story with these Republicans?'”

Read more about how Scott Walker and Chris Christie became part of the 30-year fight to defund Planned Parenthood.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — “I’ve vetoed Planned Parenthood funding, now, eight times in New Jersey,” Christie said. “Since the day I walked in as governor, Planned Parenthood has not been funded in New Jersey.”

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina — The former tech CEO made the night’s oddest remark about Planned Parenthood: “I would like to link these two issues, both of which are incredibly important: Iran and Planned Parenthood.” Without strictly linking them, she continued, “As regards to Planned Parenthood, I dare Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain'”—a moment that does not actually appear in the videos.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin — As CNN’s Jake Tapper tried to redirect the conversation away from abortion, Walker interrupted him. “I, like so many other governors here, defunded Planned Parenthood, four and a half years ago, in a blue state,” Walker said. “But I think the bigger issue here is we should be able to do this nationally, and this is precisely why so many Republicans are upset with Washington.”

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida — Bash asked Bush to discuss his remark that he was “not sure we need a half billion for women’s health issues”—which Bush called a misstatement. “I’m the most pro-life governor on this stage,” Bush said. “Life is a gift from God. And from beginning to end we need to respect it and err on the side of life. And so I defunded Planned Parenthood. We were the only state to fund crisis pregnancy centers with state monies. We were totally focused on this. And I would bring that kind of philosophy to Washington, DC.”

“There are 13,000 community-based organizations that provide health services to women, 13,000 in this country,” Bush said, repeating a popular conservative myth that other groups could step up to replace Planned Parenthood. “I don’t believe that Planned Parenthood should get a penny from the federal government.”

Read More – 

Here’s What the GOP Candidates Had to Say About Reproductive Rights at the Debate

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s What the GOP Candidates Had to Say About Reproductive Rights at the Debate

Louisiana: Women Don’t Need Planned Parenthood. They Have Dentists.

by BrandiPeden Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The task seems straightforward: Make a list of health care providers that would fill the void if Louisiana succeeded in defunding Planned Parenthood. But the state, which is fighting a court battle to strip the group of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicaid funds, is struggling to figure out who would provide poor women with family planning care if not Planned Parenthood.

Nowhere is this struggle more apparent than in a recent declaration by Louisiana’s attorneys that there are 2,000 family planning providers ready to accommodate new patients. A federal judge, reviewing the list in an early September court hearing, found hundreds of entries for specialists such as ophthalmologists; nursing homes caregivers; dentists; ear, nose, and throat doctors; and even cosmetic surgeons.

“It strikes me as extremely odd that you have a dermatologist, an audiologist, a dentist who are billing for family planning services,” said the judge, John deGravelles, who will determine in the next week whether it is legal for the state to end Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid contracts. “But that is what you’re representing to the court? You’re telling me that they can provide family planning and related services?”

His harsh questioning sent the state back to the drawing board. On Tuesday, the state’s attorneys acknowledged that the dentists and other specialists didn’t belong on the list. They filed a pared-down version that lists just 29 health care providers.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican contender for the presidency, moved to cut off $730,000 in Medicaid reimbursements to the state’s two Planned Parenthood clinics in late August in response to several heavily edited, widely circulated videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood employees selling fetal parts, which is illegal.

Planned Parenthood denies the charges and has asked for an injunction to block Jindal.

In straining to identify alternate providers, the state has added to a growing body of evidence that other health care providers would have a difficult time accommodating low-income women if Planned Parenthood were no longer able to take Medicaid. Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana do not provide abortions. Instead, the clinics provide thousands of annual cancer and STI screenings, overwhelmingly to low-income women on Medicaid. In Louisiana alone, the group last year performed 2,100 well-woman exams, 1,200 pap smears, and 11,000 STI tests, and it administered long-lasting contraceptives 4,100 times, to 5,200 patients, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast said.

Several Louisiana health care providers that would have to take over Planned Parenthood’s patients have stressed that their capacity to do so is very limited. “You can’t just cut Planned Parenthood off one day and expect everyone across the city to absorb the patients,” Stephanie Taylor, who oversees the state’s efforts to curb sexually transmitted diseases, told the New York Times. “There needs to be time to build the capacity.”

Another obstacle is the dearth of family planning clinics and doctors that accept women on Medicaid or other forms of public funding. Across the country, Planned Parenthood provides contraception to almost 40 percent of women who rely on public programs for family planning. The Times notes that four out of five Planned Parenthood patients have incomes below 150 percent of the poverty level, at a time when two-thirds of states reported difficulties ensuring there are enough health providers, especially OB-GYNs, for Medicaid patients.

On Tuesday, there was fresh evidence for what the fight to defund Planned Parenthood means for poor women. The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank, published an analysis of nearly 500 counties where Planned Parenthood operates clinics. In 103 of those counties, Planned Parenthood is the health care provider for every single woman who relies on public funding for contraception. In an additional 229 counties, Planned Parenthood clinics provide care for at least half of patients who rely on Medicaid.

“Certainly in the short term, it is doubtful that other providers could step up in a timely way to absorb the millions of women suddenly left without their preferred source of care and whether those providers could offer the same degree of accessible, quality contraceptive care offered by Planned Parenthood,” the Guttmacher researchers wrote.

But the notion that patients could turn elsewhere remains a key rationale when abortion foes attempt to strip the group of $528 million in federal funding. The argument came up frequently in a Wednesday hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on the Planned Parenthood sting videos. “We often hear that if Planned Parenthood were to be defunded, there would be a health crisis among women without the services they provide,” testified Gianna Jessen, an anti-abortion activist who was born after an unsuccessful abortion. “This is absolutely false. Pregnancy resource centers are located nationwide as an option for the woman in crisis.” Abortion foes have also touted a map showing more than 13,500 clinics that could replace Planned Parenthood.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the junior Republican from Louisiana, has said there were more than 100 community health care centers “scattered all over the state” that could accept Planned Parenthood’s patients.

Lawyers for the state appeared to contradict him after they whittled down their list of capable providers to 29. And even among those providers, their ability to pick up Planned Parenthood’s slack is questionable. In Baton Rouge, the site of one of two Louisiana Planned Parenthood clinics, the state lists five alternate providers. But only three of those offer contraception, according to the state’s filing, and two of those have wait times ranging from two to seven weeks. One of the Baton Rouge clinics the state suggested is not accepting any new patients for STI, breast cancer, or cervical cancer screenings.

The state did not withdraw its original list without a fight. When pressured by Judge deGravelles, an attorney for Louisiana stood by the list, saying it represented every provider in the state that had used a family-planning billing code for insurance reimbursement. Here is an excerpt of the transcript:

The judge is set to rule on Planned Parenthood’s call for an injunction before September 15, when the state’s contract with Planned Parenthood would expire and Medicaid reimbursements would stop flowing.

In the September 2 hearing, deGravelles expressed reluctance to allow the contract to expire, since the state hadn’t articulated a good reason for doing so. “You have 5,200 women who are getting their care at these facilities,” he said. “If these contracts are terminated that care is going to be disrupted…for no reason related to the health care they’re getting.…They’re going to have to get other doctors, they’re going to have to seek out other places to get their health care. Correct?”

“They will have to do that,” a lawyer for the state replied. “Correct.”

View the original here – 

Louisiana: Women Don’t Need Planned Parenthood. They Have Dentists.

Posted in alo, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Louisiana: Women Don’t Need Planned Parenthood. They Have Dentists.

This GOP Presidential Candidate Is Trying to Destroy Planned Parenthood. Now Planned Parenthood Is Fighting Back.

by FinlayBales Posted on August 26, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Planned Parenthood in Louisiana is asking a federal judge to halt presidential candidate and state Gov. Bobby Jindal’s efforts to cut Medicaid funding for the health care organization, arguing that the cut would hurt nearly 6,000 low-income women, men, and teens who access the group’s services each year.

Referencing the series of attack videos that depict Planned Parenthood officials in California and other states discussing fetal tissue donation, Jindal earlier this month directed the state’s department of health to terminate Planned Parenthood’s contract with Medicaid, saying the organization was not “worthy of receiving public assistance from the state.”

Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, which operates clinics in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, does not offer abortion services in Louisiana. It does, however, provide physical exams, breast cancer screenings, and testing for sexually transmitted infections to 10,000 people each year, 60 percent of whom are enrolled in Medicaid.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, lawyers for the health care organization wrote that those patients will be cut off from health care access as early as next week, causing them “significant and irreparable harm,” unless the court blocks Jindal’s decision. Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood, which totaled nearly $730,000 last year, are set to end September 2 unless the court steps in.

A key issue is whether cutting off Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding is legal. This month, the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) warned Louisiana that terminating Medicaid provider agreements likely violates a federal rule requiring Medicaid beneficiaries to be able to obtain services from any qualified provider.

The point of that provision, according to CMS, is to “allow Medicaid recipients the same opportunities to choose among available providers of covered health care and services as are normally offered to the general population.”

Louisiana isn’t the only state to cut funding for Planned Parenthood: Alabama, Arkansas, New Hampshire, and Utah have taken similar steps. And Republicans in Congress tried, but failed, to push through a bill to slash $500 million in federal funding.

Jindal is also one of a handful of Republican governors who have launched investigations into state Planned Parenthood affiliates in the hopes of finding criminal activity related to the sale of aborted fetal tissue. Those investigations, many of which are taking place in states that don’t have fetal tissue donation programs, have so far turned up nothing. The investigation in Louisiana, however, has put on hold the construction of a third Planned Parenthood clinic, which was approved by the department of health earlier this year after months of pushback.

But coming out swinging against the country’s largest women’s health care organization hasn’t translated to a more successful presidential campaign for Jindal. He was one of two sitting governors who did not get to participate in the first prime-time Republican debate this year because the forum was limited to the top-polling candidates. National polls have consistently put him in the low single digits.

View original – 

This GOP Presidential Candidate Is Trying to Destroy Planned Parenthood. Now Planned Parenthood Is Fighting Back.

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on This GOP Presidential Candidate Is Trying to Destroy Planned Parenthood. Now Planned Parenthood Is Fighting Back.

Arkansas Is the Latest State to Defund Planned Parenthood

by ChristoStallwort Posted on August 15, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Following in the footsteps of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson has directed his state’s Department of Human Services to terminate its Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood. The termination will be effective in 30 days.

In a statement, Hutchinson said, “It is apparent that after the recent revelations on the actions of Planned Parenthood, that this organization does not represent the values of the people of our state and Arkansas is better served by terminating any and all existing contracts with them. This includes their affiliated organization, Planned Parenthood of Arkansas and Eastern Oklahoma.”

The announcement comes in the wake of outrage over heavily-edited sting videos released by anti-abortion activists alleging a litany of offenses by Planned Parenthood. The Obama administration contends that cutting Planned Parenthood off from Medicaid funds breaks federal law.

Federal money cannot be used for abortion, and abortion is only three percent of Planned Parenthood’s services. The organization mostly provides STI/STD screenings, contraception, cancer screenings and the like.

Continue reading: 

Arkansas Is the Latest State to Defund Planned Parenthood

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Arkansas Is the Latest State to Defund Planned Parenthood

Ben Carson: Abortion Is the No. 1 Killer of Black People

by JeannaPTLP Posted on August 14, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Thursday, Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon and Republican presidential candidate, double downed on his recent assertion that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger used abortions as a population control tool in order to try and destroy the black population.

When asked by Fox News if he stood by his eyebrow-raising comments, Carson answered unequivocally, “Absolutely. No question about it.”

“Anybody can easily find out about Margaret Sanger and what kind of person she was and how she was a strong advocate of eugenics,” he explained. “She wrote articles about eugenics and believed that certain members of the population weakened the population and was not enamored of black people. And it is quite true that the majority and plurality of their clinics are in minority neighborhoods.”

But Carson then brought the discussion up to 2015. “It brings up a very important issue and that is do those black lives matter?” Carson added. “The number one cause of death for black people is abortion. I wonder if maybe some people might at some point become concerned about that and ask why is that happening and what can be done to alleviate that situation. I think that’s really the important question.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control, heart disease is the number one cause of death for African Americans.

His attack on the women’s health organization comes the same week that it was revealed Carson used fetal tissues to conduct medical research—a practice that has come under fire in recent weeks after an anti-abortion group published a string of a heavily-edited video footage appearing to capture Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of fetal tissues.

Despite his very vocal anti-abortion criticism, Carson defended his past research on aborted fetuses and argued that there was no inconsistency with this and his continued attacks on Planned Parenthood. “Killing babies and harvesting tissue for sale is very different than taking a dead specimen and keeping a record of it,” he said. “Which is exactly the source of the tissue used in our research.”

Source:

Ben Carson: Abortion Is the No. 1 Killer of Black People

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ben Carson: Abortion Is the No. 1 Killer of Black People

Here’s What the Presidential Candidates Had to Say About Reproductive Rights in the First GOP Debate

by ZacheryHaydon0 Posted on August 7, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Thursday night, the ten front-runners in the race for the GOP presidential nomination gathered in Cleveland for the first debate of the primaries and naturally the discussion included women’s health issues. Fox News hosts grilled Florida Sen. Marco Rubio on his opposition to exceptions to abortion laws for victims of rape and incest and Gov. Scott Walker over his support for a ban on abortion that doesn’t make an exception for the life of the mother. They pressed former Gov. Jeb Bush over his ties to a pro-abortion rights group, and Donald Trump on his onetime support of reproductive rights.

Here’s what they had to say:

Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — Kelly asked Rubio about his record of opposing exceptions to abortion restrictions for victims of rape or incest. “I’m not sure that’s a correct assessment of my record,” Rubio shot back. “I have never advocated that.” Kelly may have been referring to the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act. This was a bill Rubio sponsored in 2011 that would make it a crime for anyone—except for the parents— to take a girl across state lines for an abortion with no exception for victims of rape or incest. Rubio was also a sponsor, in 2011, of a controversial 20-week ban on abortion that only made exceptions for victims of rape if they reported the crime to the police.

Rubio added he felt that the Constitution bans abortion: “I believe that every single human being is entitled to the protection of our laws whether they…have their birth certificate or not.”

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin — Kelly pressed Walker on his across-the-board opposition to abortion, even in to save the life of the mother: “Would you really let a mother die rather than let her have an abortion?” she asked, wondering if his position put him too far out of the mainstream to win the general election.

Walker answered, “There are many other alternatives that can also protect the life of that mother. That’s been consistently proven.” Walker was alluding to a popular pro-life myth that abortion is never necessary to save the life of the mother, an opinion rejected by mainstream medical practitioners.

Walker also noted that he defunded Planned Parenthood as governor; he signed several budgets that stripped of all funding for the women’s healthcare network.

Former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida — Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked Bush about his seat on the board of the Bloomberg Family Foundation when the group is “so openly in support of abortion.” Bush denied knowing about the organization’s support of abortion. He also pointed to a number of actions he has taken to limit abortion rights when he was governor of Florida. He cut funding for Planned Parenthood from the state budget, directed state funds toward crisis pregnancy centers—pro-life alternatives to abortion clinics which often spread misinformation about the negative effects of abortion—and signed laws requiring parents to be informed before a minor has an abortion.

Donald Trump — The moderators asked Trump about his declaration, many years ago, that he was “very pro choice.”

“I’ve evolved on many issues over the years,” Trump replied. “And you know who else has evolved, is Ronald Reagan.” Trump then told the story of a pair of friends who decided against abortion. “And that child today is a total superstar.”

Former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas — Chris Wallace of Fox News asked Huckabee about his support for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, and whether it would work against him among moderate voters. In response, Huckabee came out swinging for personhood: “I think the next president ought to invoke the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, now that we clearly know that that baby inside the mother’s womb is a person at the moment of conception,” he said. “This notion that we just continue to ignore the personhood of the individual is a violation of that unborn child’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. It’s time that we recognize the Supreme Court is not the Supreme Being.”

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas — In his closing statement, Cruz promised that “on my first day in office” he would prosecute Planned Parenthood over the sting videos dominating the headlines.

Originally posted here:

Here’s What the Presidential Candidates Had to Say About Reproductive Rights in the First GOP Debate

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, oven, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s What the Presidential Candidates Had to Say About Reproductive Rights in the First GOP Debate

Trump Adds a Touch of Class to the Anti-Planned Parenthood Mob

by KaliSabofrv Posted on August 4, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In a radio interview yesterday with conservative host Hugh Hewitt, Donald Trump took the unusual step of agreeing with other Republican presidential candidates. He said that it would be better for the federal government to shut down than to continue funding Planned Parenthood.

“The only way to get rid of Planned Parenthood money for selling off baby parts is to shut the government down in September. Would you support that?” Hewitt asked. Trump replied, “Well I can tell you this. I would.” In the late ’90s, Trump said he supported keeping late-term abortions legal, but since first considering a run for the GOP nomination in 2011, he has been pro-life.

Trump joins a long list of conservatives who have expressed outrage over undercover videos released by a network of anti-abortion activists last month. Jeb Bush also offered his two cents. “The next president should defund Planned Parenthood,” he said in an interview. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal severed the state’s Medicaid contract with Planned Parenthood yesterday. Meanwhile, the Senate debated a bill that aimed to strip all federal funding of Planned Parenthood. The bill ultimately failed after the threat of a Democratic filibuster led by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Republican senators and 2016 hopefuls Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have promised to do everything in their power to deny funding to Planned Parenthood, even if it comes down to a government shutdown. Arizona Sen. John McCain, who chastised his colleagues for the 2013 shutdown, told NPR that he believes a shutdown would be justified in this case. “If Democrats want to stand before the American people and say they support this practice of dismembering unborn children, then that’s their privilege,” McCain said.

It’s possible that when Congress returns from its five-week August recess, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner will attach a new bill to defund Planned Parenthood to a must-pass budget bill, employing the same tactics that were used in the 2013 shutdown.

Now that Trump has signed on to a potential shutdown, he thinks it could succeed. He acknowledged to Hewitt that the government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act in 2013 was a political disaster for the Republicans—but that was their own fault. “If they had stuck together, they would have won that battle,” he asserted. “I think you have to in this case, also.”

See the article here:  

Trump Adds a Touch of Class to the Anti-Planned Parenthood Mob

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Ultima, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trump Adds a Touch of Class to the Anti-Planned Parenthood Mob