Posted on 04/04/2011 7:11:52 AM PDT by SoFloFreeper
"An Open Letter to Fellow Conservatives"
The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives--urged on by conservatives opposed to abortion--has voted to defund Planned Parenthood. On this issue, Republicans and conservatives are dead wrong.
My grandmother was a friend and supporter of Margaret Sanger, one of America's earliest, most effective advocates of birth control.
I met Sanger several times before her death in 1966 and was impressed b y her intellect and her commitment to many issues, not the least of which was enabling every woman to be "the absolute mistress of her own body" as she put it.
I didn't agree with everything the formidable Mrs. Sanger espoused. Yet I respected her dedication to making health-care and birth-control services available to all Americans, especially to those with low incomes, no insurance and no other recourse to medicall services.
And I admired her fearless, relentless readiness to stand up for what she believed, despite decades of angry, mean-sprited, often hypocritical attacks on her ideas and her character.
So I am aggravatged by the continuing attacks on Sanger and her primary legacy, the Planned Parenthood network that still serves so many Americans today.
Now the Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives--urged on by conservatives opposed to abortion--has voted to defund Planned Parenthood.
On this issue, Republicans and conservatives are dead wrong.
Abortions are a minor aspect of Planned Parenthood's mission to provide reproductive health care, education, and other services to Americans, regardless of income.
More than 90 percent of its work focuses on preventive care, including preventing unintended pregnancies that often lead to unwanted, neglected and abused children.
In Pittsburgh and across America, Planned Parenthood offices help people to make better decisions about whether to have children. They help to arrance adoptions for women or couples unable to raise a child but unwilling to end a pregnancy.
Many of their clients are poor Americans who cannot afford birth-control measures that can cost $50 a month or more.
Of the 10,000 to 12,000 people who use local Planned Parenthood services, about 20 percent are teenagers, half are ages 20 to 30 and the rest are older than 30.
Of course, no one wants tenneagers to get pregnant. Yet far too many do--and they need reliable, honest advice about what to do next. For many of them, Planned Parenthood is the only reliable source of that advices. For many others, Planned Parenthood is the only safe, reliable source of counseling to avoid getting pregnant in the first places.
If not for Maragaret Sanger's vision and bravery, many poor Americans would have no place to turn for birth-control measures and counseling or for other health-care services.
To take that away makes on sense.
Dick Scaife
(Mr. Scaife is chairman of Trib Total Meida Inc., parent company of hte Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and its family of publications. Note: this op-ed was originally published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)
Paid for by Republicans for Planned Parenthood, a project of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Scaife can support PP all he wants with his own dollars.
He makes no case for PP getting any of MY dollars.
If PP is such a great damn idea, can it not survive on its own?
Few things this damn gub mint does that makes me madder than them taking MY MONEY to pay for others abortions.
That’s just wrong.
ping!
I wonder how he fit so many lies into such a small space.
no sir, you are not a fellow conservative, when you are on the wrong side of both social and fiscal policy, you are not on our side.
It’s nauseating.
I would rather be unwanted, neglected and abused than dead. Mr. Scaife (a billionaire) has everything including life. He would like to shut the door of life on those who stand on the other side.
The real story of Margaret Sanger, whom he lauds (calling into question his rationality) has not been told in any broad sense. She was a eugenicist, a racist and a Nazi sympathizer. An absolutely murderous villain and elitist.
Scaife has funded many conservative causes but this issue reveals that he expends his efforts on the things that the wealthy elites have always been interesed in: Money and Power.
He is no social conservative.
nowhere in the constitution is the federal government given the power to regulate abortions. therefore by default it is a states rights issue.....defund it
Birth control costs 50 bux a month?
Hell, you can get a condom for a quarter in sex shops!
So....at .25 cents each, a woman would need to have sex almost 7 times a day to reach her magic 50 dollar mark.
Where is she, I want to meet her..... :)
What page of the constution authorizes the funding.
Isn't he the founder and funder of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy that Hillary Clinton said was behind the effort to bring her "husband" down?
I wish I had the money to do another full page ad connecting Margaret Sanger with eugenics and Black genocide.
Why is the only approved PP solution to unwanted pregnancies abortion? Abortion isn't a form of preventative case, is it?
Legs closed = FREE.
His claim that PP is the only source of quality pregnancy care is an abject and profoundlky insulting lie. There are many very high quality prolife counseling centers even in benighted Pittsburgh. He is correct that prenatal death centers are very limited. They should be outlawed as unconstitutional.
Practically everyone who has met one of history’s monsters in a social setting will tell you how they’re charming, intelligent, respectful, etc., etc., etc. Maybe it’s the halo effect of all the bright lights and reflected adulation of the masses. Perhaps these people think, “wow, I’m chatting up Herman Goreing, Fidel Castro or Barak Obama! He’s charming, much nicer than the guy who would bomb London, kill thousands of Cubans or pass Obama Care!”
For ever after, those who met famous monsters must tell everybody that they knew them, they basked in their glory; unlike all of you who only read history, I was part of it! So, to collect this glory, they become apologists and by their apology tell you how great they themselves are that these famous and wonderful people talked to them. I’d imagine in the liberal mindset, having been lectured in person by Margaret Sanger is rather like having been spoken to by God or an angel.
pro-life bump!
What goes around comes around, Scaif.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.