Planned Parenthood funding threatened [Why is it tax-funded to being with?]

The Herald Palladium (St. Joseph-Benton Harbor Michigan The Newspaper for Southwest Michigan) ^ | 1-5-2002 | LYNN STEVENS

[Notwithstanding]

The Herald Palladium Archives

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January 05, 2002

Planned Parenthood funding threatened

By LYNN STEVENS / H-P Staff Writer

With help from Southwest Michigan legislators, family planning agencies that merely mention abortion options could be pushed to the end of the state funding line.

And poor people seeking birth control could suffer the consequences, say those opposed to the bill passed last month by the state House. Opponents say the bill is a thinly veiled attack on Planned Parenthood, which has offices in Benton Harbor and South Haven.

Berrien County's state representatives Ron Jelinek and Charles LaSata voted for the bill as did Mary Ann Middaugh of Paw Paw.

The Senate will likely take up the bill in February, said state Sen. Harry Gast, R-Lincoln Township.

Gast is skeptical about the bill, calling it little more than a legislative litmus test thrown down by Right to Life of Michigan.

He said he has long tired of the organization's uncompromising ways. "Even in a life-and-death situation, there's no deviation in the Right to Life scorebook," he said.

If Right to Life shows no compromise, then "I'm ready and willing to walk the plank on this one," Gast said.

It could be a lonely walk.

"Every bill that I can remember that was a choice whether or not people would have access to abortion, the Right To Life people have prevailed. In the Senate, I would say it's 2/3 to 1/3 in favor of Right To Life."

Gast said no one is for abortion, "but I would not condemn anyone for it, in very limited circumstances."

If the bill is carried out as written, public health departments may lose federal money - distributed by the state - and Planned Parenthood offices may cut family planning services to poor and moderate-income women, say the bill's opponents. Ironically, public health officials and Planned Parenthood officials say eliminating pregnancy prevention services could increase the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions in Michigan.

The bill would grant funding priority to agencies and organizations that do not perform abortions, do not make abortion referrals, and do not advocate for continued legal abortion.

Jelinek, (R-Three Oaks) said he understands "all the services that have been available will continue to be available ... organizations that do not perform abortions will have higher priority.

"Now if nobody else is available, funds will still go to that institution," which could be Planned Parenthood.

He said the bill does not affect public health departments because they do not perform abortions.

But according to federal law, health departments would be affected because they and all other providers that get federal Title X funding are required to explain all reproductive health options. At the moment, abortion is a legal procedure in the United States, and therefore, federal law requires it to be included in the list of options.

LaSata (R-St. Joseph) said the bill would not affect state funds going specifically to Planned Parenthood in Southwest Michigan.

LaSata said all state funding for health services is allocated by county, and each county's share is determined by its population. Because there is no alternative health care provider in Berrien County, there would be no change in family planning service levels.

"Charlie LaSata is not correct on that," said Margy Long, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood-Mid-Michigan Alliance.

"Charlie may be making the assumption that Title X funds are dispersed the same way as other state funds, but in fact, there's nothing in this bill that says that's how it has to happen," said Long, whose alliance includes Cass, Van Buren and Berrien counties. "There's nothing to prevent the money from going to some other place.

"The money all goes into one big pot. It gets dispersed among all the providers in the state. The goal is that services should be geographically widespread. There's nothing in the bill that requires that."

Jelinek and LaSata, endorsed in 2000 by Michigan Right to Life, justified their votes on the basis of a 1988 state referendum banning use of public funds for abortions for women receiving public aid unless necessary to save the life of the mother.

Although state voters stopped tax-funded abortions, legislators should not believe the public opposes legalized abortion or supports the House bill, said Charlotte Wenham, former president of Planned Parenthood.

The longtime St. Joseph resident said every poll in the last decade, including polls paid for by sitting legislators, has shown that people in Southwest Michigan overwhelmingly support abortion rights.

Wenham said Right To Life's ideology is overshadowing health care issues.

"The question is: Are legislators voting in the best interest of health care of all individuals, including those who can't afford it, or in favor of the strongest lobbyists in Lansing? I don't think health care is an area where we can experiment for religious and political reasons."

Mark Bertler, executive director of the Michigan Association for Local Public Health, wrote in August 2001 to the chairman of the House committee considering the bill. He wrote that his board, representing public health departments across the state, opposed it.

"The board is concerned that this legislation may put Michigan's successful family planning and pregnancy prevention programs at risk. Over the past two years Michigan has received $40 million in federal bonuses for reducing teen pregnancy, out-of-wedlock births and reducing the number of abortions in our state. ... As currently written, the bill stigmatizes all providers, including local health departments."

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[Tribune7]

Judicial wisdom, common logic and Roe vs. Wade are things that just don't mix.

[MHGinTN]

Do you consider abortion as a 'reproductive right'? That's not a trick question ... merely testing your powers of reasoning, e.g. once a new lifetime has begun, is killing the new individual to be classed as a 'right of reproduction'? And if so, why not extend that reasoning to toddlers, etc.?

[Sir Francis Dashwood]

The desire to have children is a heterosexual desire.

"Utter nonsense. It is a HUMAN desire, if anything.

It requires HETEROSEXUAL biology to procreate, something some homosexuals yearn for. Maybe they are just too inhibited to use a real vagina and real penis to do it...

[bvw]

Proof:

Madg's opinion is Madg's alone. Madg doesn't care to know history nor fact. Madg's opinions are thus based on arbitrary mixes of fact and whimsy, and since whimsy is ever more agreeable, whimsy drives out fact. Therefore Madg's opinion is wrong.

[toenail]

Indexing.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Which is why PP provides pre-natal care and general practice. You seem to have them pegged as "anti-child," and that is simply not true.

Yeah right........and Stalin's forced collectivization programs were really a benevolent attempt to grow a better potato.

[MHGinTN]

Essentially, from that perspective, you are not a person until you are born; and therefore are not entitled to the constitutional rights enjoyed by the populace. Yes, you are defending the serial killing of womb-bound infants who have been proven to be conscious and aware, able to learn and even dreaming on occasion while still in the womb. At least we've cut throught to the heart of your position now. So I ask you, should it be legal to practice serial killing of womb-bound infants, whether you defend it as a 'reproductive right' or other? This entire debate is over whether it is right, not whether it is a protected behavior. Is serial killing of individual human beings right, in the interest of the convenience or empowerment or whatever you want to defend? ... With the exception of killing the infant to save the woman's life, which I believe should be her choice ... some women have risked the doctor's advice to kill their unborn to prevent possible death to her(the mother) and have lived to cherish their little ones.

[Galatea]

Just a reponse to the question in the parentheses --- fella, why is MY tax money funding the Drug War, which I find far more immoral than PP? The answer is that sadly, we don't really get to choose where our tax dollars go in any direct way. We pay for both lefty and righty causes, just deal with it.

[Galatea]

As for what people did before PP, or birth control, I would assume you mean -

women died from bearing too many babies. people committed infanticide. children regularly died from disease due to squalid conditions. women died of illegal abortions. children lost their mothers to either botched childbirth (like my grandmother lost her mother, at 13) or illegal abortions. lives were destroyed. etc. etc. it was horrible.

gee willikers, what did people do before child labor laws were enacted?

[MHGinTN]

But if it is her choice to continue the pregnancy, are you advocating forced abortion?

[He Rides A White Horse]

There is a constant theme running through madg's posts, and that is that his/ her perspective is the only one that matters. It stands out.

[He Rides A White Horse]

You're another all-seeing all-knowing liberal "God" who dismisses the arguments of others as inconsequential; another self-proclaimed "God" who would decide who lives and who dies.

[He Rides A White Horse]

I just calls 'em as I sees 'em.

Me too......and here is a tidbit for you..........

You simply illustrate the futility of reasoning with aliberal. It's impossible. You are a group of ideologues whose core belief is that you know what's best for everybody else; if they disagree, you are better equipped than everybody else to tell (or "make") them do what is best for them.

You monopolize every institution that puts you in a position to force your policies on others; when they resist, you feel justified in compelling them to do your bidding as it is for the "common good", as dictated by you and others like you.

What the others forget at times is that we don't have to listen to you, because if push comes to shove, we'll win. Believe it. You are only in this position because we suffer it; and due to the nature of your agenda and mechanisms, it's always your way or the highway.

Your policies can only lead you to a point of confrontation, and when it happens, you and your friends will be swept away.

I guarantee it.

[He Rides A White Horse]

Personally, I don't care if you 'understand' a thing............you have never cared about the opinions of others, indeed, those who hold those differing from yours are attacked, harrassed, and vilified. You are totalitarians, nothing more.

It's time we just do what we know is right, and stop worrying if some liberal 'understands' or agrees. Just as you never cared one way or another about the feelings or beliefs of others on any matter, we should not care one way or another. Just because you don't comprehend doesn't mean we are wrong.

Sometimes one has to simply do what they have to, and we are in that position................and we have plenty of justification to ignore you.

[He Rides A White Horse]

.........and always remember this. The elements you need to assert complete dominance don't support you.

The military isn't composed of "China First" types like your Democrat party, or whatever other liberal group you belong to.

The previous 'Commander-in-Chief' realized this fact; indeed he did everything he could to diminish the armed forces, to weaken them. Because he always knew that when he moved to crown himself King for Life, there would be a group of dedicated people coming for his head.

He tried to subvert them, to appoint his type of people in key positions; everything he did he did for himself, with the interests and security of the rest of us running dead last to what was good for Bill Clinton.

His would be successor tried to discount the votes of the same military types in Florida, remember? Not a good move, but perhaps the only thing he could have done in regards to them. Because ultimately............

.......the Emperor has no clothes.

[bvw]

The big clue is the word "Planned" -- PP was never about women's health anywhere near as much as it was and is about *control* -- "planning" one's life, in what appears to many on the outside of it to be beyond the levels one does "plan" things; it is done so isolate not to integrate.

PP is like the KKK of sex. PP wants sex to be all "white".

I'm speaking metaphorically, I mean "white" not in the sense of race, but in the sense of an inhumane "purity". A purity that is in reality unacheivable except through extreme desensitation, and meaness. That metaphor for "white" is an ancient one.

So the PP is the KKK of sex.

PP founder Sanger was not even metphorical about it: she sought to eliminate or nearly eliminate the black race -- a subhuman race in her eyes -- by eugenics, by *PLANNING*.

The modern PP is at the surface certainly not about racial purity, and they are indeed driven by a hot desire, a longing, an unfilled need to *control* sex and sexuality. They are far more sexual purists. But the racial aspect is still there, sublimnated, but there. Look at their boards, at their supporters.