In an interview earlier this week, an MSNBC host appeared more worried than even Planned Parenthood’s president over the push to defund the abortion giant.
On Tuesday, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards came on Lawrence O’Donnell’s The Last Word to discuss the GOP health care bill and its inability to win enough support in the Senate.
At one point in the interview, O’Donnell, one of the more … excitable MSNBC personalities, seemed more upset than Richards at the bill’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider.
“I’m sure you know this,” he began, “with all the people you’ve been talking to and the people who use Planned Parenthood and – and friends of mine who use Planned Parenthood and others who are on Obamacare.”
He went straight to his point: “This has been six months of incredible and difficult anxiety and worry and near panic for them.”
Richards couldn’t have said it better herself. “That’s right,” she inserted. “Absolutely.”
“I was in Paul Ryan’s district where we have three health centers that provide preventive health services to women, thousands of women who get their basic primary care from Planned Parenthood,” she added. “They were desperate about what would happen to them.”
Neither of them addressed a 2015 report by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, that showed the entire state of Wisconsin (Speaker Paul Ryan’s state) has just 22 Planned Parenthood locations, while, at the same time, 162 Federally Qualified Health Clinics and Rural Health Centers.
Instead, Richards began repeating her same old talking points: “Planned Parenthood is an affordable health care provider to millions of women.”
(Planned Parenthood’s 2.4 million patients make up less than one percent of approximately 325 million Americans, by the way.)
Richards also bashed the current effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
“To have the president of the United States now rooting for the collapse of the healthcare system in this country is unconscionable,” she insisted.
She’s one to talk.
According to Planned Parenthood’s most recently published annual report, the organization performed 328,348 abortions and received $554.6 million in “government health services grants and reimbursements” for the year 2015 – 2016.
The point that both O’Donnell and Richards missed is that pro-life Americans don’t want to fund an organization – in any way – that violently tramples on the life and dignity of the unborn human person.
While the Hyde Amendment largely prevents federal funding from going towards abortion, the pro-life movement and pro-life politicians argue that money is fungible, or that Planned Parenthood could offset costs with public funds to free up other resources for abortion. (Another point highlighted by pro-life groups.)
Despite offers from President Trump, Planned Parenthood has, time and time again, refused to separate abortion from its other services.
