Friday, March 29, 2024

Women’s Health Will Be Just Fine Without Planned Parenthood

The opportunity conservatives have been awaiting for years has finally arrived: defunding Planned Parenthood. Republicans tried to cut federal funding to the abortion provider last year but were out of luck. The bill passed the House and Senate but was vetoed by President Obama, which was no surprise given his extremely pro-abortion track record.

But now, Republicans have a fresh opportunity to take away Planned Parenthood’s half a billion taxpayer funded dollars — something their liberal counterparts are very aware of and doing everything in their power to obstruct. Why? It comes down to one single issue: abortion.

This issue explains Democrats’ unrelenting objection to Republicans’ alternative to funding Planned Parenthood, which involves reallocating those funds to the other 13,540 community health centers across America, compared to Planned Parenthood’s 650 locations. These health centers offer all the same services as Planned Parenthood, besides abortions. Reallocating government dollars to these health centers would make the services women would normally seek at Planned Parenthood just as affordable. This alternative is not only more convenient for women, but also alleviates controversy and ensures Americans who morally oppose abortion aren’t funding such services, even indirectly, with their tax dollars. Unsurprisingly, Planned Parenthood’s response has been to do everything in their power to hide this fact and convince American women that they need Planned Parenthood, and that their defunding would lead to a national crisis.

How could Democrats be opposed to such a logical, ethical solution? It’s because the Democratic Party is inextricably tied to the abortion industry. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade, Democrats adopted abortion rights into their platform, and their position has become more and more extreme ever since, resisting any and every restriction, no matter how reasonable, on abortion access. Hillary Clinton and congressional Democrats have gone as far as to promote repealing the Hyde Amendment, which prevents tax dollars from directly funding abortions. And, to make matters worse, Planned Parenthood has become ever more closely tied to the Democratic Party, spending millions of dollars to elect Democratic candidates and making their first ever presidential endorsement for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election.

It should be no surprise that Democrats are ignoring the facts and instilling fear in Americans of what may come of Republicans’ defunding of the abortion giant. But the truth is clear: Americans deserve better than such deception, and women deserve better than Planned Parenthood.

Photo credit: American Life League via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

More From The Pulse