Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Another reason to defund Planned Parenthood,

...and believe it or not, it's not related to abortion.  Now we can go back and forth all day about the fungibility of money and how it's improbable that federal funding for contraception and women's health services doesn't end up benefiting the abortion side of the business--through referrals, buildings, and the like--but in reality, there is a much more important reason to stop this kind of aid to Planned Parenthood.

Specifically, when a woman (or occasionally a man) goes to Planned Parenthood for contraception, a referral to a mammogram, an STD test, or a pregnancy test, they are simultaneously....not going to see a doctor of even a physician's assistant for a regular checkup. 

Now certainly STDs kill (starting with about 13000 deaths annually from AIDS), and certainly breast and cervical cancers kill, but these pale before the realities of things like heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases--diseases that are likely to be detected if a person gets their contraception, STD test, or early pregnancy examination through a doctor, but not at Planned Parenthood.

So do you really value access to health care for women?  Great.  You'll be in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood, no matter what your stance on abortion.

Unless, of course, you know that the Planned Parenthood subsidy actually is in large part a subsidy for their abortion business, in which case I challenge you with another moral precept; why is it right for you to pick the pockets of the 50% or more of Americans who object to abortion to pay for it?

2 comments:

Hearth said...

Someone explain this to me, slowly.

Didn't we end up with mandated health-insurance? Because on my insurance, all the screening tests that PP parades as their reason for existence... those tests are now all co-pay free. By law. Screening mammograms? Free. Yearly exams? Free. Pap? Free.

So, um... we got a new sparkly, don't need the old one. Because everyone has their mandatory health insurance, right?

-blinks innocently at you-

Bike Bubba said...

And checkups are free, too. So there is clearly no reason to fund Planned Parenthood or any other non-medical clinic for this purpose. All it does is prevent people from actually seeing the person best qualified to help them.