Samira wrote:
Federal funding for abortions has nothing to do with Planned Parenthood, though, because Planned Parenthood receives no Federal funding for abortions. I know you have this narrative in your head that says they must, because evil; but that does not make it so.
The proposed bill only defunds Planned Parenthood for one year, and only if it continues to perform abortions. It could, if it choose, do exactly what many (including myself) have argued it should do, and actually break their business into two wholly separate financial organizations, one that performs abortions, and another that provides other health services. That way, the issue of fungibility goes away. Secondly, the issue of donation money for abortion vs other health services also goes away. Those who want to support a woman's right to abort, can proudly do so by donating to the new "Planned Non-Parenthood" (name suggestion, mine), without having to conceal their righteous support behind the facade of "supporting women's health". And, shockingly, lots of people who might want to donate money to an organization that actually helps women but don't want their money possibly being used to fund abortions might start donating to Planned Parenthood with a clean conscience. It's a good bet that a lot more money would flow into the "women's health" part of the current operation if this change were made.
One might ask why they haven't done this. I mean, we require this of religious organizations that minister, if they want their charitable operations to qualify for government funding, but we don't require this of an abortion provider? That seems like a really odd set of rules, don't you agree?
Um... More to the point, it's silly all the way around. Both sides are being silly. The portion of the GOP who want to push for this incredibly toothless protest amendment (one year?), and the president for threatening to veto an entire budget over such a minor thing. Of course, as predicted, it's only the GOP side that is being called unreasonable on this one. Given the likely criminal behavior engaged in by PP (although I'm sure they'll skate out of that because they're like a political icon of the left), it should be reasonable to defund them, even if just as a penalty for their actions. You do get that your organization being funded by the government isn't a right, right? It's something you should earn, and it should be given after careful consideration of the best use of public funds. That clearly is not what's going on here.
Drop the "us vs them" mentality and just look at it objectively. If this were any other organization receiving federal funding who engaged in activities remotely like the selling of human body parts, would defunding them even require legislation? Or would they just be removed from the funding roles for next year automatically, pending review of their status? It would be the latter, right? The fact is that somewhere along the line PP has become this huge protected thing for the left. As a result Obama is failing to do something which would be nearly automatic for any other funded organization (defund while under investigation). This isn't even about abortion anymore. It's about the silly levels to which the left circles their wagons around certain institutions, no matter how poorly they behave.
It should not even be left to a small group of anti-abortion folks to push for this, thus casting this into a "for/against" mode on the issue of abortion itself. Obama should have ordered funding ceased immediately, as he would for any other less politically connected organization. Instead, he condemned the people who blew the whistle on PPs actions, and is actively threatening to veto any bill containing language doing precisely what he should have done himself, but was too cowardly and beholden to the nutty left to do. So, sadly, it's up to the GOP (once again) to try to find a way to compromise on this. And, once again, no matter what they do, they'll still be blamed as the unreasonable party.
Who's being unreasonable? Looks like it's Obama to me. I'm honestly curious at this point what crime PP would have to commit for any action to ever be taken against them not to be attacked by the left as some kind of evil partisan anti-women move by the right. Isn't it dangerous to adopt this kind of protective approach for an organization? All it does is ensure that they will engage in ever worsening behavior. We're teaching them that they can get away with these things. They'll just do more and more of them. Protect the actions, not the people doing them. At this point, it's not about women's health, or even abortion. Its' about protecting PP. Period. Massive amount of associative transference going on here. And that's a really bad thing (tm).