Tonight, the Associated Press treated a story about a suit to overturn tiny-population Alaska's ban on same-sex "marriage" as national news — even giving it a"Big Story" promotion. Meanwhile, it kept Planned Parenthood's decision to abandon its legal effort to obtain state funding in more-populated Kansas out of its national site, thus treating it as a local story.
Same-sex "marriage" and abortion are about equal in the pantheon of establishment press sacred cows, and each issue has been the subject of disputes in several states. So the only explanation for the disparate treatment seems to be that the Alaska story's national treatment occurred because it seems to advance one pet cause, while the Kansas story stayed local because it is a significant defeat for the other. In the Kansas story, Roxana Hegeman, as seen in the final excerpted paragraph following the jump, predictably misled readers about the nature of Planned Parenthood's services (HT Life News):
Planned Parenthood drops Kansas funding challenge
Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri dropped its legal challenge Friday to a Kansas law that stripped two of its Kansas clinics of federal money for family planning, leaving uncertain the impact to its low-income patients in Wichita and Hays who depend upon them for reproductive health care services.
The organization filed a brief stipulation of dismissal Friday in U.S. District Court in Kansas.
Kansas is among several conservative states that have sought in recent years to strip Planned Parenthood of taxpayer funding. At issue in the case is money distributed to states under Title X, a federally financed family planning program. The Title X money targets low-income people seeking reproductive services such as birth control, pregnancy testing, cancer screenings and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. It cannot be used for abortions.
The development comes in the wake of an appeals court ruling in March finding that Kansas could strip clinics in Wichita and Hays of the funds while Planned Parenthood pressed its lawsuit contesting a state law it calls retaliation for its advocacy of abortion rights.
But Friday’s court filing ends the litigation.
... Planned Parenthood’s lawsuit had challenged a Kansas law that requires the state to first allocate Title X money to public health departments and hospitals, which leaves no funds for specialty family planning clinics like Planned Parenthood.
Kansas had countered that the state law restricting the distribution of federal family planning funds does not target Planned Parenthood because the statute itself does not name the group or even mention abortion.
... The entities affected are Planned Parenthood’s clinics in Wichita and Hays, neither of which provides abortion services. The only Planned Parenthood clinic that provides abortion services in Kansas is in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park. It does not receive federal family planning funding.
The "clever" Ms. Hegeman has made it appear as if the clinics in Wichita and Hays have nothing to do with abortions.
Horse manure (Wichita links are here and here; Hays links are here and here):
So those Planned Parenthood locations "only" refer patients to abortion providers, likely including late-term abortion providers. Also note that the clinics make absolutely sure you know that "we can help you" (and your soon to be deceased unborn child) get those "abortion services."
Additionally, neither clinic indicates that it does the "cancer screenings" Hegeman mentioned as one use of Title X funding.
As to the claim that the Overland Park Clinic doesn't get federal family planning funding, Planned Planned got $541 million in government funding nationwide in 2013, or 45 percent of its national revenue. It can use that cushion in deciding whether or not to keep individual clinics open. If it's such a great, altruistic organization, it should be able to get all the money it needs from donor contributions. Only then can one truly say that a given individual clinic doesn't benefit from uncalled for and offensive government largesse.
Clearly, the self-described "essential global news network" believes its far more important that a same-sex "marriage" lawsuit merely got filed in Alaska than it is that Planned Parenthood has admitted legal defeat in its effort to continue to receive government funding in Kansas.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
