The Daily Tar Heel
URL: http://www.dailytarheel.com/index.php/article/2011/04/planned_parenthood_faces_more_cuts
Current Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:01:31 -0500
Planned Parenthood faces more cuts
Second threat in less than 2 weeks
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Students gather for photographs with Planned Parenthood’s large pink bus and interest forms outside of the Student Union on South Road. Planned Parenthood met with UNC’s chapter of VOX after a brief delay due to the morning’s multiple traffic issues.
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Planned Parenthood is under threat again, less than a week after nearly losing its funding in the budget cuts that helped to avert a government shutdown.
But it is fighting back.
The bill to de-fund the organization, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Diane Black, R-Tennessee, is expected to be voted on in the House of Representatives Thursday.
“This is a direct attack on women’s health,” said Carey Pope, executive director for NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina. “If the vote doesn’t go our way, then everybody would end up losing.”
Just last week, Planned Parenthood almost lost its funding — but President Barack Obama refused to cut it from the budget.
Losing funding would disproportionately affect low-income women who rely on Planned Parenthood for services like mammograms and birth control, said Paige Johnson, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Central North Carolina.
But the outpouring of support will have an effect on the political process, she said.
“If the support we’ve heard and the support we’ve gotten so far is a sign of commitment and willingness to fight, we are ready for the long haul,” she said.
Many women’s organizations, including Planned Parenthood and NARAL, lobbied in D.C. last week to maintain the funding for Planned Parenthood. They are continuing the efforts with the onset of Black’s proposal.
Black, a former nurse, also attempted to de-fund Planned Parenthood as a state senator.
“Now as a member of Congress, I will continue to fight for the rights of the unborn through legislation like this, ensuring no federal funds are used for the promotion or performance of abortions,” she said in a press release.
Planned Parenthood’s total budget was about $1 billion in 2009, according to the organization’s 2008-2009 annual report. Of almost 11 million services it provided that year, abortion procedures were 3 percent.
Thousands of women have mobilized to email and call their legislators, asking them to oppose the legislation, Pope said.
“We’re definitely feeling the love right now,” she said.
U.S. Senator Kay Hagan, D-N.C., has also voiced her support.
“I hope my colleagues will stop playing political Russian Roulette with women’s health services and instead focus on a bipartisan, comprehensive plan to reduce our long-term debt,” she said in a statement.
But pro-choice organizations also face state opposition from some representatives in the N.C. General Assembly. A bill introduced in the state House last week would add delays, paperwork and bureaucracy to the abortion process.
Titled the Woman’s Right to Know Act, the bill was sponsored by two women — N.C. Reps. Ruth Samuelson, R-Mecklenburg, and Pat McElraft, R-Carteret.
If passed, it would require a woman to wait 24 hours after consulting an abortion provider to have the procedure. Before performing an abortion, a doctor would need to perform an ultrasound of the baby and show the woman images of an unborn child at different developmental stages in the womb.
According to the bill, the images would be accompanied by this message: “The life of each human being begins at conception. Abortion will terminate the life of a separate, unique living human being.”
“It’s the worst bill that we’ve seen,” Pope said. “The fact that it is even being introduced in such a radical format is a threat.”
Abortion is legal in the state until 20 weeks of pregnancy, but most counties don’t have a legal provider.
Contact the State & National Editor at state@dailytarheel.com.
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19 comments
While Planned Parenthood officials claim that abortions constitute only 3% percent of their services, this figure is misleading. Out of the 10.5 million individual services they provided in 2006, 289,750 were abortions—roughly 3%. But this figure fails to account for the fact that a woman visiting Planned Parenthood for an abortion will receive several services—from a pregnancy test to some manner of counseling to the abortion itself—each of which is counted separately. A closer look at Planned Parenthood’s client and income numbers shows that the abortion figure is actually three times what they claim. Of 3.1 million Planned Parenthood clients in 2006, 9% got abortions. Moreover, abortion accounts for at least a third of Planned Parenthood’s total income from clinic services.
Source: Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Planned Parenthood Federation of America 2006-2007 Annual Report. http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/AR_2007_vFinal.pdf
http://www.whyprolife.com/planned-parenthood/
When Planned Parenthood is no longer the leading provider of abortions in the US, then perhaps they should be allowed to take billions of dollars from taxpayers – the majority of which will never use their services and many who strongly oppose the horrendous act that has created the silent and greatly under-exaggerated genocide of our generation.
UNC students, how many of our peers are missing from our classrooms thanks to billions of MURDERS labelled under the guise of “women’s rights”?
Actually it isn’t “murder” because murder is a legal term implying the act to be against the law. This is legal killing. I’m so tired of Planned Parenthood’s rhetoric. If you are so ashamed of providing hundreds of thousands of abortions each year then stop! Otherwise quit acting like you are a health clinic. You aren’t regulated like a health clinic, you have a multi million dollar political action committee, and you rarely provide anymore than ONE “choice” for women.
STOP BEING SO BIASED DTH. I doubt the journalism school teaches you to write one-sided articles. Especially when you are a school newspaper and not the the Washington Post.
Even if a total of 9% of planned parenthood patients got abortions, that means the other 91% of women there were there for birth control, regular gynecological screening, STD tests, and other female health related matters that they could not otherwise get due to the prohibitive pricing of health care in this country. Whether or not your pro-life or pro-choice, getting rid of planned parenthood will be a gross disservice to the millions of women who need it to maintain healthy medical and sexual practices.
There is a big difference between getting rid of Planned Parenthood and not giving them 88.7 million dollars of Federal Tax Dollars. They are a 1.1 billion dollar business. They aren’t going anywhere anytime soon if they don’t get a pithy 88.7 million. Heck they spent 104 million dollars on political campaigns last year. I guess that was money that couldn’t go to provide STD tests!! Tell them to stop being so political and start spending their own money on “female health related matters” (would you including abortion in that?) and stop demanding that I subsidize them with my taxes.
@ pro-lifer You are correct that Planned Parenthood receives federal funds, but they are not allowed to use these funds for abortions specifically. I understand your frustration at (indirectly) funding something with which you disagree, but remember that almost everyone has to do this (my taxes have funded the Iraq war, the war on marijuana, George W. Bush’s salary, abstinence-only based sex education…)
Hey prolifers, I’ll support ending funding to Planned Parenthood if you’ll support universal health care. But until you tell me where my 22 year old sister with no health insurance can go for her annual Pap smear, maybe you should stop trying to deny people access to affordable medical care.
@d No one is denying anyone access to affordable healthcare. Simply put, Planned Parenthood is such a thriving business on their own without the government’s help that they could provide that for those who wish to use their services. Instead of spending government money on political based advertising, they could be helping women who can’t afford care. I also have a sister, 5 months pregnant, without healthcare and she receives enough help from already existing government health care programs like Medicare.
Planned Parenthood is not a government organization. Nor does it need financial help to remain open and running. Planned Parenthood is a business. If you are dissatisfied with unaffordable women’s health care, complain to their publicity board wasting tons of your tax-dollar money instead of actually helping.
I’d rather give my tax dollars to different programs which can’t support themselves and are not intertwined with such controversial political affairs – for instance education and students like me who will struggle to pay for school next year thanks to financial aid cut backs while the administrators of Planned Parenthood are rolling in their millions.
@concerned, your sister must be a medical marvel if she is having a baby at 65 or is having a baby while in end stage renal disease. Or maybe you’re b.s.‘ing and you don’t actually have a sister who receives aid from “Medicare.”
“Losing funding would disproportionately affect low-income women who rely on Planned Parenthood for services like mammograms and birth control, said Paige Johnson” As pointed out on the D. Rehm’s show on Tuesday, Planned Parenthood does not provide and has never provided mammograms. This has been a source of contention, concerns over misappropriated funds; as stated by Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood has never provided mammograms.
Also, Planned Parenthood used NO federal funds for abortions. They provide Family Planning services that benefit everyone.
I agree with “concerned woman”. Stay strong! I don’t know the politics of Planned Parenthood, but I know that life is precious and I don’t want my tax money supporting any organization that advocates abortion. I am an adoptive mother, and I am so grateful that my daughter’s birth mother made the difficult and courageous choice to keep her pregnancy. I am so blessed!
@Another, every life is precious, unless it’s the life of a woman who dies of undiagnosed cervical cancer. In that case, screw her.
@nitpicker…“medicare” “medicade” …You get my point…Luckily I’ve never had to use government help so excuse me if I’ve used the wrong lingo. What I do know is my sister is being taken care of by actual government programs rather than a selfish business who cares more about profits than actually helping women.
Government funds to a program are government funds to a program…period. Planned Parenthood can’t claim that none of that funding goes to abortions when all of that money is placed into the same budget. Let’s say (for example) that that funding covers 50% of their operations, and abortions take up 9% of their operations. It’s only up to them and their publicists to say that that 9% is not part of that 50% but rather the other 50% instead. What hogwash!
@it should be pro-life….but only neonatal life. I love that Planned Parenthood can provide affordable care such as STD screening for women. But as mentioned, when their soaring profits could provide those services regardless of government support then why take away tax paid money from organizations that CAN’T pay for themselves!
When it comes down to it, Planned Parenthood is in it for the money. They are a business. And when a business chooses to provide services that are not necessarily imperative for a woman’s health (i.e. abortion) they should take on those services at their own expense rather than on the taxpayer’s dollar.
Planned Parenthood is in it for the money?? A “selfish business”?? I guess that explains why its doctors, nurses and volunteers keep showing up to help patients despite threats by the most extreme pro-lifers, and face daily intimidation by the “candelight vigils”… I am so sick of driving by the Planned Parenthood on 15-501 every day and seeing people standing out there in protest. Yes, they are protesting peacefully, but how would you feel if you were facing an unwanted pregnancy, scared and worried, and you had to walk by all these people who are there trying to make you feel guilty? If you don’t like abortions, fine. First of all, don’t ever have one yourself. Second of all, support organizations like Planned Parenthood that provide birth control to women who can’t otherwise afford it. To argue that Medicaid (and btw, that’s how it’s actually spelled) adequately covers the family planning needs of lower income women in this country is just plain ignorant.
If Planned Parenthood is so efficient in giving women birthcontrol then why are there so many unwanted pregnancies? Maybe the real issue is irresponsible women. It’s not that unborn child’s fault that the mother didn’t seek birthcontrol FIRST or didn’t keep her legs closed when she knew she couldn’t afford a pregnancy.
If you aren’t ready for a baby, then you aren’t ready for sex. Or at least be responsible if you can’t control yourself. She SHOULD feel guilty as the innocent are paying for her irresponsibility.
Great contribution, Umm…duh. You’ve really taken this dialogue to the next life with your amazing insights about irresponsible women who can’t control themselves or keep their legs closed.
But, hey, luckily for you, it’s still legal to be an asshole in this country.
And directionless sarcasm and name-calling is amazing insight taking the dialogue to the next level?
It’s just common sense. Take care of yourself and take care of your body and then no one will have suffer from your irresponsibility – the unborn or the taxpayer alike. Sounds like someone’s a little bitter?? feeling guilty??
Hell no, I’m very proud of my many abortions. For every abortion you don’t have, I’ll have three.
It’s a shame that at yet another point in world history a class of human beings is being dehumanized and people don’t realize the evil in front of their own faces…being done with their own hands…
For every Jew not murdered, Hitler murdered three…
For every African not enslaved, the American south enslaved three…
And so on…the genocides and horrendous crimes continue..
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