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To: xzins
It is not about a vote on abortion. It is about a vote on the continued funding of Planned Parenthood. Big, big difference. PP advocates will say that the federal funding is not used for abortion, but rather, to provide all of the other services they provide for poor women, e.g., cancer screenings. Here is the Dem spin

"Republicans portray Planned Parenthood as primarily focused on performing abortions and – intentionally or not – using American taxpayer dollars to do it.

Not so, say Democrats who counter that the group's 800-plus health centers nationwide provide an array of services, from screenings for cancer to testing for sexually transmitted diseases. Abortion is just one of many procedures, and the law bars Planned Parenthood from using tax money for it.

In the budget maelstrom that threatened to partially shut the federal government Friday stood Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a 90-year-old organization now part of a decades-long congressional battle over abortion.

Giving its version, Planned Parenthood said it performed about 330,000 abortions last year, 3 percent of its total health care services. The organization also said its doctors and nurses annually conduct 1 million screenings for cervical cancer, 830,000 breast exams and some 4 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases.

The organization said it receives $363 million in federal funds, getting its money from both the Title X program and Medicaid. Title X provides grants for family planning and related health services under a law signed by Republican President Richard M. Nixon in December 1970.

Of the Title X money, Planned Parenthood gets about $70 million, some 25 percent of the $317 million in Title X spending. The organization's annual budget is $1.1 billion and includes individual donations.

Federal law bars Planned Parenthood from using tax dollars for abortion. In 1976, three years after the landmark Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion, Congress passed the Hyde Amendment which bars the use of taxpayer funds for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

326 posted on 04/09/2011 8:46:18 AM PDT by kabar
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To: kabar; All
Of course every federal dollar PP gets is a dollar of their own they can use for abortions. It's subsidizing abortions any way you look at it.

Add in the missing BILLION in PP federal funding between 2003 and 2008, according to the GAO, and there's a very real question about giving PP any federal money.

If you can "misplace" $1.3 billion in tax dollars over 5 years, why do you deserve to be trusted with 1 penny more?

As Pence, author of the rider, said Friday the money available for Title X doesn't change only whether PP itself gets any of it.

This battle is about abortion. It is not about women's health. Those funds are not cut.

337 posted on 04/09/2011 9:22:22 AM PDT by newzjunkey (OBAMA & his DEMOCRAT allies are starving children & killing the elderly.)
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