Posted on 09/07/2012 4:27:58 PM PDT by wagglebee
A deliberate effort is underway to rebrand Planned Parenthood as an integral provider of healthcare services, without which untold millions of women would lack basic medical care, or so the story goes. Thus, whenever any effort is made to cut off funding for the nations largest abortion provider and stalwart financier of leftist politicians, were told there is a war on women.
But its not a war on women when a state simply places a higher priority on funds for true health services that Planned Parenthood doesnt perform Take, for example, mammograms.
Yes, mammograms. Perhaps there is no greater falsehood than the deceitful, and largely successful, attempt to persuade Americans that Planned Parenthood performs mammograms. It doesnt.
When the Komen Foundation announced in February that it would no longer provide grants to Planned Parenthoodpartly due to the fact that Planned Parenthood does not directly provide mammograms its ideological and political supporters sprang into action. They decried Komens decision to eliminate funding for this imagined provider of mammograms. Planned Parenthoods Executive Director, Cecile Richards, , made the claim. So did President Obama. And an unsuspecting public was led to believe that such bold claims, by people who should know, must be true.
No matter that phone calls to Planned Parenthood from Live Action demonstrated clearly that this was not the case: Obama had spoken. And the presidents campaign together with Planned Parenthoods ads continue to beat this drum (almost as if they were coordinated), building off the earlier confusion to frighten voters about the prospect of a Romney administration cutting off funding for Planned Parenthoods cancer screenings.
Anytime someone suggests to you that Planned Parenthood performs mammograms, I encourage you to share with them this letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services demonstrating that its untrue. No Planned Parenthood clinic in the country is authorized to perform mammograms. If they are nevertheless performing them, they are violating federal law.
Under the federal Mammogram Quality Standards Act, administered by HHS, [n]o facility may conduct an examination or procedure involving mammography without a certification from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. While a 2004 amendment to this law permits some states to also authorize mammography facilities, these certificates are still issued under the authority of the FDA, and the FDA records all certificates and investigates facilities holding such certifications. In short, there is no uncertainty: if Planned Parenthood could perform mammograms, the FDA (and HHS) would know it.
When President Obama and other Planned Parenthood partisans were making their mammogram claims, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a Freedom of Information Act request to seek any certificates held by any Planned Parenthood clinic or affiliate in the country. The response from President Obamas own HHS is that no such certificates exist. No Planned Parenthood affiliate in the nation possesses the necessary certification to perform mammograms under federal law. Subsequent e-mails to the department further confirmed this fact.
Federal law provides that anyone operating a mammography device without such a certificate is subject to substantial fines of up to $10,000. So when Cecile Richards, Kathleen Sebelius, or President Obama tell you that Planned Parenthood performs mammograms, theyre telling you that Planned Parenthood is subject to serious fines for violations of the Mammogram Quality Standards Act.
Some Planned Parenthood clinics may provide much less effective manual breast exams. And some encourage women to perform self-exams, which breast cancer organizations like the Komen Foundation actually discourageas counterproductive to womens health. And, in some cases, Planned Parenthood employees may tell a woman she should go get a mammogram from one of the public facilities that could have provided one to her in the first place. But in order to get a mammogram, a woman needs to go to someplace other than Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood and the politicians it supports must persuade Americans that Planned Parenthood is a full-service womens health providera critical part of our health infrastructurein order to keep the spigot of taxpayer dollars open. And so continues the deliberate campaign to deceive the public into believing the falsehood that Planned Parenthood performs mammograms for women who otherwise wouldnt have them.
Planned Parenthood doesnt perform mammograms. And President Obamas own administration agrees. Perhaps with this lie exposed, we can now have a serious discussion about the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for Planned Parenthood and its political allies.
LifeNews Note: Casey Mattox is an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom.
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BUSTED. No pun intended.
I remember when the Komen PP funding BLEW UP and the left were screaming how women would be deprived of live saving mammo’s. Speaking of which . . . mine is scheduled next week at a REAL provider of mammo’s. Oh joy. :(
Somebody better tell Romney, then. When Chris Wallace asked him about his donations to Planned Parenthood, Willard mumbled something about breast exams.....
Does Planned Parenthood donate money to any political campaigns?
If PP were really a health care provider as the liberals claim, and if women were unable to get health care in some other way, then all they would have to do is split the abortion part of PP off from it. Few would object to it then.
The fact that they try to pretend that abortion is just an incidental part of what they do is entirely disingenuous. This is like bin Laden supporters pretending he was a charity instead of a terrorist because he gave money to an orphanage.
Let PP divest itself of the abortion business and the problem of funding would disappear.
(I know there are some who would still object to other services they provide, including other means of contraception, but I am talking about the PP *BIG LIE* which is the abortion issue.)
Thank you for this information. I did not know till the Koman controversy that money I donated to a charity could just be given away to any other cause. Now I am aware that the causes don’t even have to be related.
bttt
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