The cognitive dissonance on the right is truly astounding surrounding this issue. On one hand, the pro-life lobby doesn’t want public access to legal abortions in the United States, and they see Planned Parenthood as a major service provider in this realm. They stress that abortion shouldn’t be used as contraception, and that the legal way to prevent a pregnancy should be though forms of contraception (more extreme elements suggest abstinence as the only form of birth control, but thankfully, most on the right aren’t that nutty).
But in typical Republican knowledge, they want to defund Planned Parenthood because they offer abortion services in some of their clinics. Now, the number varies from source to source, but abortion services make up anywhere from 3-10% of Planned Parenthood’s total services in a calendar year. So the pro-life lobby wants to defund Planned Parenthood because 1/10th of the services they provide don’t line up with their ideology. What about the other 90-97% of services? If you are a low-income woman who relies on Planned Parenthood for some of your basic health services, say goodbye to the following:
Anemia testing, cancer screenings, cholesterol screening, diabetes screening, physical exams, flu vaccines, high blood pressure screening, tetanus vaccines, thyroid screening, sex education, STD testing, pregnancy tests, contraception, and much more.
But who cares about all those fantastic health services? They use taxpayer dollars to fund abortions, don’t they? Nope, sorry to break this to you, but abortion services at Planned Parenthood are not publicly-funded by the federal government, nor any state governments. No matter that 9/10 services they provide have nothing to do with abortion, they are clearly doing the Dark Lord’s work and must be stopped.
All kidding aside, those on the right want women to make better contraceptive decisions, which they allege they aren’t because abortion-as-contraception is so rampant in our country. So to help you make better contraceptive decisions, they’re going to push to defund a major provider of contraception.
Wait, what? This is the problem with the pro-life lobby: their reasoning is so backwards that it physically hurts to try to wrap my brain around it. First off, the rate of abortions in the United States has gone down steadily since the 1980’s, but that isn’t because of more restrictive laws against abortion. Instead, it is suggested that – surprise, surprise – easier access to contraception and education is to blame for the declining rate of abortions:
“Better access to birth control and sex education are the biggest factors in reducing unplanned pregnancies,” said Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Campaigners say intrauterine devices are one form of contraception reducing pregnancy, especially teen pregnancy, at a dramatic rate.
It is clear that Planned Parenthood provides a much needed service that is actually helping reduce the amount of abortions in the United States. But for the abortions they do perform, what is the big deal about using the fetal tissue for research? And this is what makes the abortion debate such a ideological dead-end: this is an issue governed by emotion that could very easily be governed by science. It isn’t that they oppose medical breakthroughs – they just don’t want people to have access to abortion. For those of you on the fence about these ridiculously-edited Planned Parenthood sting videos, the reality of the situation is made fairly clear, especially if you watch the 2 1/2 hour unedited version of the videos.
Planned Parenthood is not allowed to sell fetal tissue for a profit to researchers but instead can charge enough to cover the costs of preparing and shipping the tissue. So the “$30-100 for body parts” narrative is, while hyperbolic, correct, except that the money spent to procure the tissue goes right into preservation, preparation, and shipping of said tissue. These “sting videos” didn’t really do anything other than outline what the law clearly states: this is not to be used as a revenue stream but instead as a silver-lining to an unfortunate procedure. Why let the tissue go to waste when it can be used to make legitimate medical breakthroughs?
And what happens to that tissue? It is used in on-going research on Parkinson’s. In the past, it was used to test the first polio vaccine. It helped researchers at the University of Wisconsin develop a required test for prescription drugs, which has cut down on cardiac deaths in patients using newly-approved drugs. Researchers have expressed their displeasure over this whole debate because it impacts the progress of their studies. Breakthroughs in breast cancer research have come through the use of fetal tissue, but the pro-life lobby would like that to kindly end.
And that’s where the conversation ends, just like every argument about abortion. There is no way to reason with the unreasonable because they’re beliefs are encompassing of their entire life. In most cases, it is tied to a book. But ultimately though, none of these facts and figures matter to the supporters of defunding of Planned Parenthood and eliminating use of fetal tissue in medical research. Sure, they’ll gladly take prescription drugs, developed using fetal tissue, to cure them of their ills, but they will fight for the right to end that kind of progress. But of course, lets throw out all potential medical breakthroughs because a minority of Americans – yes, pro-life Americans are the minority now, making up only 44% of the country – don’t like that abortion is accessible.
