Right-wing lawmakers and media have been laser focused in their mission to defund Planned Parenthood. Republicans in Congress are threatening a government shutdown unless they get their way.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) crunched the numbers and according to a new September report, defunding Planned Parenthood would cost the government $130 million over ten years.
Ever since the anti-choice group, Center for Medical Progress, began releasing a series of deceptively edited undercover videos falsely claiming that PP sells aborted fetal parts, Republicans have been using the debunked videos to make their misguided case against reproductive choice. Multiple state-level investigations, as well as a federal investigation, have cleared PP from any wrongdoing, but that hasn’t swayed the forced-birth crowd from their crusade against affordable healthcare. GOP lawmakers and voters also consistently ignore the fact that the Hyde Amendment prevents federal dollars to be used for abortions.
Planned Parenthood provides critical family planning services, birth control (which prevents millions of abortions), cancer and breast screenings, STD testing, and other wellness programs that benefit millions of men and women. Conservatives have begun insisting that community health clinics have the ability to provide the same care as PP, but experts agree that isn’t possible.
An article in The Hill cited the CBO report which projected that by permanently defunding Planned Parenthood, the government “would increase direct spending by $130 million over the 2016-2025 period.”
From the article:
“The CBO, Congress’s nonpartisan scorekeeper, projects that defunding Planned Parenthood would actually end up increasing government spending, because it would result in more unplanned births as women lost access to services such as contraception. Medicaid would have to pay for some of those births, and some of the children themselves would then end up qualifying for Medicaid and other government programs.
So while CBO estimates that cutting off federal funds to Planned Parenthood would reduce spending by $520 million over 10 ten years, it would also increase spending by $650 million over that period. The net effect is an increase in spending of $130 million.”
You simply cannot claim to be pro-life when your main goal is to strip health and preventive care away from millions of people.
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