Brown said the GOP efforts to de-fund the organization “goes too far,” even though he backs budget cuts.
Brown’s announcement makes it harder for Republicans to push to add this provision in a budget deal.
The government is now operating under a three-week funding measure as lawmakers negotiate a budget that would last until the end of the year. House and Senate Republicans want more than $50 billion in cuts and to include social policy riders that strip federal funding of programs they oppose, such as Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions.
Here’s Brown’s statement:
“I support family planning and health services for women. Given our severe budget problems, I don’t believe any area of the budget is completely immune from cuts. However, the proposal to eliminate all funding for family planning goes too far. As we continue with our budget negotiations, I hope we can find a compromise that is reasonable and appropriate.”
“Family planning” is a euphemism, of course. At least these days:
“Despite its protestations that abortion is only a small part of its services,” said Jim Sedlak, vice president of the pro-life group American Life League, “Planned Parenthood has increased its number of abortions for 15 straight years. During that time, it has gone from committing 9.3 percent of all abortions in the United States to committing 27.5 percent.”
Sedlak also noted that the new Planned Parenthood report shows it now does 340 abortions for every one adoption referral and 47 abortions for every one prenatal care client. He said Planned Parenthood’s own records now show 5,320,095 surgical and medical abortions done at Planned Parenthood centers from 1970 through the end of 2009.
Look, I can see taking a principled stand on the issue of choice. I’ve done so here, noting that I’m pro-choice, but with serious reservations and in favor of a series of restrictions and father’s rights considerations. But this is not about choice; it’s about what constitutes an appropriate use of taxpayer money, particularly at a time when we are facing a dramatic fiscal crisis.
Tell me: will Brown at least support cutting the federal funding Planned Parenthood uses to advertise for more federal funding? Or is he going for full-on surreal, pretending he’s a fiscal bulldog while simultaneously proving himself unwilling to make cuts to what Planned Parenthood’s own numbers suggest amounts to a chain of neighborhood Abortion Huts?
And does Brown not realize that by keeping Planned Parenthood tied to federal funding, he is committed to saddling every as yet unborn child in this country with the debt of those who are being aborted?
Ironic, that.
The notion that groups larger than one can manage their affairs correctly strikes me more and more as faulty.
Good thing we’d never let the Feds close enough to impact us personally.
I’m surprised “Abortion Hut” didn’t make this list.
(If you’re not familiar with the artist, don’t let this comic put you off. Dude’s a mad genius, and he was a really nice guy at the book signing on Monday.)
I had a girlfriend who was a medtech who screened PAP smears for Planned Parenthood. To the extent that they do things of THAT nature, I support them.
So, I too oppose Republican efforts to completely de-fund PP. Compromise, anyone?
If they want to become a clinic that doesn’t do abortions on the taxpayer’s dime, it might be possible to continue funding them in a situation in which Obamacare doesn’t exist. However, they would no doubt refuse that compromise.
“To the extent that they do things of THAT nature, I support them.”
Why do I gotta pay for PAP smears?
Jeff’s a pro-choice RINOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! :)
But hey, Scott Brown drove a pick-up truck all over Mass. to drum up votes. So he’s cool in my book.
My wife likes PP because when she was poor and single she could go there for free or very low cost gyn stuff. But given its mission from racist eugenist Margaret Sanger, there is just a wee bit of irony that the Dems are so into the government supporting PP.
As for Brown, he is going to have a hard enough time getting re-elected as it is and I guess he decided that in Massachusetts, voting for defunding PP is a battle not worth fighting. Remember Romney and his wife writing checks to PP when he was governor there? A lot of people in MA, despite being the decendants of “good” Pilgrims, Puritans, and Irish, Portuguese, and Italian Catholics, seem to love PP and apparently because of its mission of providing abortion services.
Brown is not Mike Castle (although if the MA GOP can find a better candidate to run for his seat, go for it). Brown is decidingly better than his Dem opponent would have been and probably his prospective opponent in the next election cycle. Brown may be a poor conservative for…say South Carolina (yes Lindsay you need to go) but for Massachusetts he is a needed vote against Obamacare.
I am for defunding PP.
Deliciously ironic, if it were fiction. Too bad it’s reality…
As God-bothery as I am, I’m not trying to impose my beliefs on others. But, that said, I don’t see how “freedom of choice” is by and large respected if my tax dollars are funding abortions. Leave that for charitable groups, just like church organizations and other private groups have to fund women who decide to see the pregnancy through and offer the child up for adoption.
It’s not “freedom of choice” of someone else is paying, it’s charity. And if tax dollars are being used it’s not charity, but a shakedown, since one doesn’t “choose” to pay taxes.
I’m not surprised Brown would pander to his constituents on this; it’s part of what comes with the perversion of the system via the 17th amendment.
I’d fund some of PPs more health-centric activities, such as cancer screening. But they need to separate off the “family planning” and abortion-werks for that to happen. And I mean a real split, and not any of this on paper crapola.
Squid: thanks so much for that link. The Oatmeal guy is freakin’ hilarious.
Scott Brown is Ted Kennnedy in drag.
“Get the U.S. out of my uterus” is only the Left theme song until the bill comes in the mail. Then it’s “Wait, wait! Where are you going, Uncle Sam?”
They could at least be consistent. Free and willing choice comes with responsibility for accepting the consequences, and in this case, the consequences the need to pay for elective medical services rendered.
I always smile at the illogic about how conservatives are all racists, but the dems support PP. If we were really racists, we’d be calling for more Abortion Huts to be built in city centers. What with the eugenics and all.
But hey, the Dems support PP, and formed the KKK. It really makes one think.
Yeah, but they have uteri, which is kind of a great argument these days. How you fill in the middle parts with words like ‘patriarchal,’ ‘chauvinist’ and ‘godbothering’ is your own business.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703899704576204580623018562.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
This is part of the problem.
We really need to start seeding healthcare demonstrations with “KEEP THE GOVERNMENT IN MY UTERUS!” signs.
We really need to start seeding healthcare demonstrations with “KEEP THE GOVERNMENT IN MY UTERUS!” signs.
That’s what you don’t get. A uterus is a sort of font of wisdom – and it is both entitled to gubmint cheese and entitled to an exception from laws and regulations that apply to medicine in a general sense. Dare I say that the uterus is magic? I dare. You know what the original lyrics to The Who’s “Magic Bus” were, don’t you?
Actually, I want to seed healthcare demonstrations with 2 to 3 year olds with signs that say, “Keep Doctors with Vacuums and Scalpels away from my body!”
KEEP THE GOVERNMENT IN MY UTERUS!
<a href="http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/2011/03/guess-what.html"Cake Wrecks gets into the spirit of it all.
“Get the U.S. out of my uterus”
That would make it a “uter.”