From MSNBC:
As expected, [Republican] Indiana Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to strip federal funding for Planned Parenthood passed the House by a 240-185 vote. Ten Democrats joined the GOP majority, while seven Republicans voted against the measure.
It is very unlikely that the measure would pass the Democratic-controlled Senate.
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If people want to donate money to Planned Parenthood, by all means do so. Certainly there are many wealthy people who think their mission should be supported, and many not-so-wealthy people who can still afford to send in some money. I fail to see, however, why they should have a claim on tax dollars. Let PP stand or fall on whether or not people believe enough in their mission that they will individually vote with their money to keep them open, instead of being able to collectively coerce those who don’t believe in it to keep them open.
Are there any non-governmental organizations that you think should have a claim on federal funds, RonF?
I’m still waiting for the explanation of why “coercing” taxpayers to pay for contraception for low-income women is bad but coercing taxpayers to pay for wars they don’t believe in is okay. If the defense department wants to have a war, I’m sure there are plenty of wealthy individuals that can help them out.
War is historically a legitimate function of the state; assisting individuals not to reproduce is not.
Prospectively you and/or others may wish to alter that, but that’s the history.
I don’t understand why anyone cares about this. It’s not even going to pass the House with Obama’s inevitable veto, and it certainly won’t pass the Senate. So why does anyone care about this? Every blog, from Feministe to Jill Stanek, is getting agitated about this. Why does it matter at all? Seriously.
Abortion is controversial, but contraception is not, at least in the sense that some 90 percent of sexually active American women use birth control of some sort.
These tea party folks came in all about being deficit hawks, and they’ve spent most of their time since they got in trying to curtail women’s rights.
I think it’s pretty important to make sure that voters know where their representatives’ real priorities lie. This doesn’t stand a chance of passing of Senate or overriding a veto … as the current House and Senate are constituted. We have elections every two years, and the make-up of the House and Senate will keep changing. I think it’s worth putting a big spotlight on this vote.
Also, it’s pretty historic. The feds haven’t been funding PP for as long as they’ve been funding wars, but they’ve been funding them for quite a long time at this point.
If Planned Parenthood provided contraceptive services but not abortion, there would not be 10% of the hostility about government funding.
The federal government began funding PP about 50 years ago.
Robert @7: You’re forgetting that a large segment of the anti-abortion movement is anti-contraception, particularly as certain very common methods of contraception are viewed as abortifacient. And then there is the view that things other than elective surgical abortion (such as Plan B) really are abortion. Unless things have changed very recently in a way that I’m unaware of, there is no national ‘right-to-life group that is pro-contraception, and several are flat-out opposed to contraception as a whole.
If PP stopped providing surgical abortion, the hostility might go down by about 10%, but it’s nonsense to suggest it would plummet.
chingona @3: Because defense tax dollars don’t go to strumpets, duh!
I’m sorry, Robert, but that’s a load of horseshit. All the major pro-life organizations are either explicitly anti-contraception or refuse to take a position on contraception. They believe the pill and the IUD amount to abortion. There is consistent hostility to the idea that contraception should be covered by health insurance or paid for by programs that otherwise provide health care to low-income people. In many states that are hostile to abortion rights, the student health clinics at state universities don’t provide contraception and the student insurance plans (which are paid for out of pocket by students) don’t include contraceptive coverage. These “conscious clause” bills allow pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraception.
And that’s not even getting into the abortions not performed because of contraception provided by PP.
You are both incorrect.
The vast majority of people in this country have no problem with contraception. Organizations, which represent the most organized and committed element and which rely on that element for some of their funding, may have hardline positions for political reasons – although declining to go on the record as being in favor of contraception is hardly a hardline stance.
Polls regularly show that the American populace is mixed on the subject of abortion; a 24-year polling record from Opinion Dynamics shows pro-life fluctuating between 40 and 50 percent, and pro-choice fluctuating between 42 and 51 percent. (http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm – it’s the first poll of many on the page, but they all show broadly the same figures, sliced and diced in different and interesting ways.)
The number of people opposed to contraception is so small that on a back-of-the-envelope search I couldn’t even find an opinion poll on the topic; they don’t do polls where they already know the answer is “most everyone”. I did find polls which are good proxies for public views on contraception. The proxy polls I found indicate that 78% of people oppose “conscience clauses” permitting pharmacists to opt out of dispensing contraception – 85% of Democrats, 70% of Republicans, and 78% of independents (2004). Polls show that 67% of people support providing birth control pills in the public schools – some with parental approval, some to all comers (2007). (http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion2.htm)
In 2010 a combined 84% of Americans think the birth control pill has made womens’ lives better (56%) or haven’t hurt (28%), with just 9% saying it has made things worse. (I presume the remaining 7% had no opinion or didn’t know.) 84% also believe the pill has made American family life better or has made no change. (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/07/health/main6468828.shtml)
These numbers do not support a belief that there is widespread opposition to contraception in this country. Is there opposition? Of course. There is opposition to *everything*. Does that opposition find more purchase in the anti-abortion community? Of course – there’s a logical connection.
But nearly everyone in this country uses birth control, nearly everyone approves of it, and nearly everyone thinks it’s such a good thing that they don’t even believe that pharmacists should be allowed to refuse to dispense it. I actually DO believe that pharmacists should have conscience rights, and *I* am in favor of widely-available contraception. When even the people who think as I do are in favor of it…opposition to it isn’t a motivating factor for most people.
Planned Parenthood isn’t vulnerable to demagoguing because a fringe of people is opposed to abortion; they’re vulnerable to demagoguing because a lot of people are opposed to abortion, and PP is the biggest abortion provider in the country. There is no such opposition to contraception, and if Planned Parenthood were purely a contraceptive operation, there would be, at this late date, no effective opposition to Planned Parenthood. Pro-life groups fighting against contraception would be a fringe movement supported only by a fringe of the populace, whereas pro-life groups fighting abortion are relatively mainstream and supported by a plurality.
Two-thirds of people support giving the pill to kids in school. That is not a statistic compatible with a belief that there is strong opposition to contraception. I doubt that two-thirds of people approve of the public schools having soda machines.
You were right in 1900. You aren’t right today.
Please note that I *am* distinguishing between having no problem with contraception, and having no desire to pay for other people’s.
Robert: we are “both incorrect” about what? That there are no significant anti-abortion organizations that are in favor of contraception? You admit that in your post, but try to change the subject by saying that most people have no problem with contraception – which you also admit that you can’t even support except by analogy to other statistics. As both chingona and I pointed out, “contraception” includes methods that many groups (including the Catholic Church) believe to be pretty much the same thing as abortion.
You claim, without support, that if PP stopped providing abortion that there would be a mathematical reduction in hostility. You ignore the fact that even if PP did not directly provide surgical abortion, it would still provide referrals to abortion providers, and would still provide so-called “abortifacient” methods like the Pill and the IUD. It would also likely provide access to things like Plan B that are not really abortion drugs except in the mind of anti-abortion activists.
Indeed, Americans have a very mixed view on abortion (it usually boils down to the ‘draw the line at my toes’ standard); but you’ve offered nothing to suggest that if PP stopped actually performing abortions, that Americans would rush to embrace PP. Would it be less controversial? Sure. Would those ambiguous Americans then say “Well, hey, they only REFER people for abortions, so I’m OK with them, especially that whole providing sex ed and condoms to anyone who asks for it thing”? Not buyin’ it.
Yeah. My point was not that people who self-identify as pro-life are opposed to contraception. It’s that every organization that is politically active on this issue – and really, that’s who these politicians are courting – is opposed to contraception. (And apparently all the people who identify as pro-life but use contraception and donate to these organizations haven’t bothered to agitate for them to change their tune.)
Therefore, I have no faith that if PP stopped performing abortions tomorrow, they would suddenly have a change of heart. And they would still refer for abortions, as they should, being a full-service reproductive health organization (including prenatal care and cancer screenings) and abortion being a legal part of reproductive health in this country.
I’m not convinced that PP actually is vulnerable to demagoguing. It’s vulnerable to an intensely ideological House that didn’t run on this issue voting to remove all its funding. Not sure that’s the same thing.
OK. What actions are all these anti-contraception organizations taking against the many, many facilities and organizations that provide contraceptions and abortion referrals, but don’t actually provide abortions?
Robert, I gave you a list of things they’ve done or have tried to do @ 9.
It is specifically because of the lobbying of pro-life organizations that the health insurance offered to students through Arizona’s state universities doesn’t include contraception.
They attack funding for women’s health and local clinics at the state level all the time. I don’t think there is another national-level organization quite like Planned Parenthood, but if you know of one, go ahead and name it and we can talk about that example.
ETA: Can’t believe I forgot that during the Bush years, they cut off aid to women’s health groups overseas that advocated for changes in their own country’s abortion laws. I’m not sure where advocating legal abortion falls, in pro-life morality, on the continuum between referring and performing, but a lot of very poor women who already had a lot of children to provide for lost access to contraception in those years.
Robert: You’ve asserted that if PP stopped actually providing abortions, opposition to the fact that it gets government funding would drop to 10% of what it now is, without evidence of same. And you can’t seriously be claiming that if PP said “Okay, we won’t actually do abortions anymore; we’ll just refer those out” that anti-abortion groups would think of this as awesome – or that they would be cool with PP continuing to offer ‘abortifacient’ contraception.
No, they wouldn’t be “cool with it”, most likely, but their ardor would diminish. OK, I cannot prove “90%” – but you can’t prove the contrary, either. I think it is common sense that “baby murder” disapproved of by half the country is one hell of a bigger motivator than “birth control hate” disapproved of by maybe 10%. YMMV.
Chingona, your list @9 is not particularly responsive. Hostility to funding birth control for strangers isn’t an attack on the organizations that provide the birth control; nor is the presence of conscience clauses.
My assertion is not that hostility towards various forms of funding the reproductive lives of strangers will disappear; it is that, absent abortion as an issue on the table, many pro-life organizations and most pro-life people show little or no interest in pushing for defunding the institutions providing the care.
People want to defund PP because PP performs 1/3 of the abortions in the US, not because they give out condoms and counseling.
They defunded the UN Population Fund, which doesn’t provide abortion or abortion counseling, but does provide maternal care, reproductive health care, and treatment for fistula. It’s also done more to fight coercive abortion in China than any other organization in the world.
It’s a pretty safe bet that the next time a pro-life Republican wins the White House, it’ll be defunded once again. It’s hard to say how many people will suffer and/or die because of this, but “tens of thousands” isn’t an unreasonable estimate.
Robert,
The House could easily have placed a restriction on organizations that take title X funding requiring them to have no involvement with providing abortions, could even have forbidden them from referring people to abortion providers (PP would probably have chosen to refuse to take title X funds, but some other organization would likely have stepped in to do no abortion mentioning family planning, or PP would have just split even further into two organizations with separate functions). Instead, they defunded title X entirely. No money for family planning. Period.
Yes, that position isn’t supported by more than a small fragment of the population. That is just how far gone into extremist the current House Republicans are.
On the other hand, I don’t think it is particularly because they hate abortion and PP is associated with abortion and PP is a major title X recipient, or because they hate contraception. I think it is just that they hate medical services for anyone besides rich people and old people, since they also defunded community clinics, and you can’t claim that was caused by an anti-abortion position (oh hell, it’s you, so you can and do claim any crazy shit you want– let us say one can’t credibly claim). Really, I think they were just trying to come up with the cuts that would cause the most individual harm, and that would tie into their new focus on being opposed to government supported medical care of any sort.
But hey, your protests paid off, and the House is now controlled by people who seem committed to restoring the Gilded Age (minus the government support for railroad companies). Now, if you were actually concerned about deficits, they haven’t done a damn thing for that, committing to five times as much in lost revenue as they are threatening to make up in decreased spending, but the deficit peacock bit was always an obvious sham anyway.
I do like your claim that the past 50-100 years of development of general social welfare as being an expected responsibility of governments being (a) not history and (b) something that you and the Republican party oppose. I do agree with (b).
Hostility to funding birth control for strangers isn’t an attack on the organizations that provide the birth control.
I get that you don’t think your precious tax dollars should go to pay for other people’s health care. Given that it does and will continue to do so, and given that it is one of the most efficient uses, dollar for dollar, for public health spending, explain what the reason is that they go after this first. What noble libertarian sentiment is being expressed in not paying for poor women’s Pap smears that this is what they chose to take out first?
They’re throwing a bone to the social conservatives.
Thanks for your honesty.
Seriously, Robert, the fuck? You made a faux-mathematical assertion, and your response is ‘well you can’t prove I’m wrong so we’re even’?
Noted. When discussing things with you, I will refrain from engaging in estimates concerning people’s emotions. If it makes life better for you, feel free to replace “90%” with “substantially”.
Robert @24: When discussing things with me, all I ask is that you refrain from pulling numbers out of your ass to make an argument seem more factual than it really is. Whether those numbers concern emotions or not is kinda beside the point.
As I said above, are there people who would be fine with PP receiving tax money if it didn’t perform surgical abortions? Definitely. Is that a “substantial” number? Who knows? The majority of Americans are pretty confused and illogical about abortion anyway (and by that, I don’t mean that they should agree with me; I mean that their opinions are a mishmash rather than consistent or principled). Some people would probably still be mad if PP offered referrals to third parties for abortion. Or they might be OK if the federal goverment gave matching tax dollars to facilities that provided contraception but never abortion. Who knows?
But there’s no reason to think that giving up providing abortions directly would make PP’s current opponents happy. As you correctly pointed out above, this is throwing a bone to social conservatives.