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.
Thank you......
Sponsored by Republicans for Genocide? The same folks that were Republicans for Obama?
Well over 90% of abortions are performed in extremely liberal states that will never abolish it. States that would outlaw abortion are typically states where few if any abortions are performed in the first place.
Is this buttonhole kidding??? Margaret Sanger intended to kill the inferior babies, the minorities, the sick, the disabled. how can he admire this hitlerian racist eugenist????
Guess what, women? When you have sex you might get pregnant. And when you are pregnant, you are not wholly in charge of your body any more. Your best nutrients, your fluids, all go to the baby first.
If you want control of your body, you are in luck — choose not to have sex.
This guy is proud of sanger?? What a racist.
Isn't it illegal for Planned Parenthood Federation of America to spend money lobbying government, when it has a favored tax status and received government money?
So my tax dollars are being used to lobby for more of my tax dollars, so they can set up facilities that pretend to offer mammograms so they can entice women to abort their children.
“A person’s a person, no matter how small”
Horton
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And both California and New York are but a few hours away by plane from the rest of the country.
Hogwash. You don't save a fundamental principle by first destroying it. In reality all you're really doing is surrendering before the first shot is even fired.
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Exactly, which is why, as I believe you said, limiting this issue to the states is essentially a pro-choice position.
Yes and it is also a very convenient way for pro-aborts to APPEAR that they are pro-life when they actually aren't.
Actually, I said that you are pro-choice.
Do you or do you not believe that each state should be allowed to choose whether or not to kill babies?
And if each state is allowed to choose whether or not to kill babies, women can choose to go to these states and kill babies.
How can you possibly describe your view as anything other than pro-choice?
And yet again, you still fail to address the critical issue. Do you believe an unborn child is a person? YES or NO.
I must have been thinking about this editorial where they agreed with Murtha on pulling troops out of Iraq.
OK........deep breath...YES, I believe an unborn child is a person...any person with average reasoning skills can easily deduce this from my post, and from my posting history...I also believe it is a waste of time and money fighting this on the national scale, as it has been since roe vs wade..this is why the feds should be out of it entirely..on a state level this can be systmeatically attacked and defeated state by state...and to put a nail in it, are you saying it is better to have it legal in all states than illegal in some????? this will be a long and drawn out fight( it has already lasted over 40 years ) and anyway to make it simpler to fight, and any victory, would be monumental....
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This should not be a difficult question to answer, joe.
Technically the Hyde Amendment prohibits PP from using federal tax money for abortions. However, there are still plenty of reasons to defund this disgusting organization.
PP has become a sex-positivist propaganda outlet to ensure that there will always be demand for abortion. From radicalizing sex ed courses to campaigning against laws requiring HIV-positive people to inform their sexual partners of their status, PP is clearly not a nonpolitical organization so obliging non-sex-positivists to pay for PP is spitting in our faces. As Thomas Jefferson said, To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.
PP has covered up the sexual abuse of minors. If an underage girl requests an abortion, PP will NOT inform the police even if the girl is as young as 12 or 13. This makes them accomplices to the crime of sexually abusing a minor. Forget slap-on-the-wrist “discipline”; these PP staffers belong in jail.
Cecile Richards makes over $300, 000 a year as director of this so-called nonprofit organization. Also, if the median cost of an abortion is $650 and PP performed 325, 000 abortions in 2008, 650 x 325, 000 = a whole lot of money. PP does not need our tax dollars any more than Bernie Madoff does.
Remember how Selena Zito refused to write articles critical of Murtha? She was terrified that Scaife would fire her.
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