Arguments Against Planned Parenthood

Back in December 2013, the Michigan Senate Minority Leader, Gretchen Whitmer, told her colleagues in Lansing a story that she did not want to tell. Years ago she was a victim of rape who felt enormous relief that she was not pregnant and forced to consider an unwanted pregnancy from a rapist. No response was uttered by a single member of Michigan's overwhelmingly Republican-dominated, male legislature. Nevertheless, only hours before the Christmas recess, and without holding hearings or having any real debate whatsoever, Michigan’s state legislature passed some of the most backwards anti-abortion legislation ever seen in this country. They passed an act that bans abortion health insurance coverage for incest and rape. Anyone wanting abortion

Planned Parenthood performs many breast exams, which are needed to detect early cancer, and pap tests, which can find pre-cancerous cells. There’s no question that Planned Parenthood helps prevent and treat very serious sexually transmitted infections and diseases. Moreover, the organization tests for and treas STI’s quite inexpensively. Without Planned Parenthood, women who are uninsured or have a low income would have nowhere to go to get these necessary tests done. Yet in 2015, the republicans attempted to shut down the United States government over funding women’s

Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah opened the hearing by enlightening everybody about how 1,500 people die everyday in the U.S. from cancer, implying that women are using up the money available for cancer research on their birth control pills. Another republican suggested that Planned Parenthood’s money would be better spent at the Boys and Girls club. The majority of Planned Parenthood’s funding is from Medicaid. These republicans could not explain how the Boys and Girls club could help women who need, say, a Pap Smear. In a recent Rolling Stone article, Amanda Marcotte explained that, like the argument about mammograms, they were implying that women shouldn't use Planned Parenthood’s “slutty health care” in the first place. (4 Dumbest Arguments for Defunding Planned Parenthood, by Amanda Marcotte, Rolling