Defunding Planned Parenthood

Since August, that long hot month of bad movies premised on worse ideas,  I have been busy.

Doing what? you ask.

Thinking, say I:  a good and worthy pursuit requiring no further explanation. I would be a contemplative, in fact, if I had the time;  as it is, thinking is an engrossing hobby, and I do it every chance I get.

Right now I am thinking about the measure to defund Planned Parenthood, which has passed the House, will probably not pass the Senate, and meanwhile is inviting a lot of lively conversation of the hypothetical genre. What if the federal government actually stopped giving Planned Parenthood $363 million dollars annually?

Well, what if?

According to one narrative, defunding Planned Parenthood means yanking, instantaneously, an entire range of presumably irreplaceable health care out from under the feet of poor women:  pap smears, mammograms, and the like. It means, in other words, that what pro-choicers have always suspected about pro-lifers is true:  they love the unborn baby, not born baby or the baby mama. They also love rich people and Wal-Mart and white shoes and stock-car racing and skeet shooting and feeling good about not feeling other people's pain. But of course everyone knew that already.

Now, as we've all read, our federal tax dollars even now don't actually fund the abortions provided by Planned Parenthood. What we've been paying for, and what the big bad ugly pro-life movement now wants to eliminate are . . . but of course . . . pap smears and mammograms for poor women (see above), which . . . but of course  . . .  nobody in America provides except Planned Parenthood.

Which is why we fund them, to the tune of millions and millions of dollars, and not, say, faith-based systems of medical clinics in low-income neighborhoods, which provide all the services Planned Parenthood provides and more, to the exact same demographic -- except abortion. Because we want fewer abortions, really we do, and honestly, it's all about the pap smears.  Which is why it's so important to keep funding Planned Parenthood.

Now that I've stepped outside into the cold night air and drawn several long cleansing breaths, let's ponder this line of what I guess we'll have to call reasoning.

First of all, of course it's not true that low-income women have no access to reproductive medical care save through Planned Parenthood. The lowest-income sectors qualify for Medicaid, which provides comprehensive health care at no cost. That, statistically speaking, the worst infant and maternal outcomes occur at this socio-economic level is not due to non-access to health care, at least in the sense that health care is not accessible. This is the demographic least likely to seek access to health care of any kind until a problem has become an emergency;  this is the demographic most likely in the first place to live in circumstances which have a negative impact on overall health.

Still and all, poor though she may be, a woman who can get herself, or be brought, to Planned Parenthood can also get herself, or be brought, to a doctor providing care to Medicaid patients -- unless what she really wants, or what the person bringing her really wants, is not health care but an abortion.

Second, it's untrue that member of the pro-life movement value only embryonic life and want to turn mothers and children into the streets to lick motor oil off the surfaces of puddles for their sustenance. What members of the pro-life movement would like to see happen is the cessation of what amounts to a massive federally-funded reward to Planned Parenthood. If as a society we do actually want what even the pro-choice side says it wants -- a reduction in the number of abortions performed in this country -- then we have to stop offering financial incentives to an organization which performs abortions, and offer them instead to organizations providing care without the killing. They're out there;  we simply don't hear so much about them, because the PP monster is standing in the way.

Nobody in the pro-life movement is proposing that we pull the rug out from under what we might call "woman-specific health care," if what we mean by "health care" are services other than, and excluding, abortion.  There are, after all, myriad organizations which offer medical care and other resources to pregnant women and their children, without  providing abortion. Why should we not support their expansion? Why shouldn't a pro-life system of medical clinics be able to grow to the size of Planned Parenthood? Why, come to think of it, should a business like Planned Parenthood receive financial incentives, while propagandizing against the work of crisis pregnancy centers offering support and resources to pregnant women and their (living) babies? Why should we be paying this bully?

The real issue is not women's healthcare vs. no women's health care. It's why, if what we care about is health care -- you know, the pap smears and so forth -- our federal tax dollars are supporting the domination in the health-care arena of an organization whose primary activity is abortion.

Yes, the pro-life movement wants health care for women. Yes, the pro-life movement wants all mothers and children to have access to resources which enable their flourishing.

What the pro-life movement opposes is the idea that abortion is simply the price of doing the poor-women's-health-care business. If Planned Parenthood wanted to get out of the abortion business, that would change the landscape completely, with regard to funding. As a parent, I don't like their sex-education model;  I don't think my kindergarten child needs to know that everyone she knows is a sexual being. I am also not myself a believer in the benefits of artificial birth control. But I could live with Planned Parenthood's offering these services. I could live with the knowledge that -- as now -- my tax dollars were funding the provision of these services. The knowledge that my funding of these services keeps the abortion ship afloat? That there is the deal-breaker.