Sparring With Facebook Conservatives: Planned Parenthood Edition

A good friend of mine has a mother who is a Tea Party Republican – yes, I know…. it seems there is at least one in every family.

Anyway, I saw her expressing outrage with Planned Parenthood on her Facebook page – I am assuming as the result of some Fox News or Breitbart piece on the organization in the wake of the faux scandal cooked up by what may turn out to be a group of tax-dodging conservatives.

I planned to write a scathing rebuttal on her post but decided why bother. As with most Facebook conservatives I know – it is easy enough to reel her back in with a little something us liberals and progressives like to call “facts.” But, as I have witnessed time and again, the next time she watches Fox News or listens to Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh her mind springs back to conservative La-La Land…… so why bother.

Anyway, without further ado, here is her post (in italics) followed by my intended response – complete with something called “credible sources.”

NAME HAS BEEN CHANGED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY: So, let me see if I understand this correctly. The government taxes all, well most of us, and then they give some of our hard earned money to Planned Parenthood, whether or not we agree with them. Then Planned Parenthood makes large donations to political candidates, mostly (if not all) Democrats. Does anyone, other than me, see something wrong with this???????

Let me see if I get this correctly: you are wound up because Planned Parenthood receives government money in the form of Medicaid reimbursements and Title X family planning services and made political donations totaling slightly less than $408,000 last year, while the American Medical Association – one of the biggest supporters of Medicaid and whose members directly benefit from those same reimbursements and Title X payouts – is an enormous political donor. Yes, please be sure to overlook the fact the AMA spent nearly $19.7 million in donations during that same time frame.

And I guess this means that you don’t appreciate the success of Planned Parenthood and other family planning centers in reducing the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions nationwide? The last official figures from 2013 show that these publicly funded family planning services that you don’t want to fund helped women to avoid 2 million unintended pregnancies, which would have resulted in about 1 million unintended births and nearly 700,000 abortions.

So yeah, let’s cut the funding to organizations like Planned Parenthood and insure massive increases in abortions and unintended pregnancies because we all know conservatives and Tea Party Republicans support abortion as a form of birth control.

And while we’re supporting the end of family planning, let’s be sure to overlook the over $124 million spent by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year to influence mainly conservative politicians.

P.S. And while you are trashing Planned Parenthood for all their on-demand-abortions-paid-for-with-hard-earned-money-from-law-abiding-constitution-loving-Tea-Party-Republicans, which are offered in addition to the other 10,933,674 services they provide, you may as well trash them for all the Men’s Health Services they provide nationwide, to include, but not limited to:

colon, prostate, and testicular cancer screenings
general health care and routine physical exams
jock itch exam and treatment
male infertility screening and referral
urinary tract infections testing and treatment

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