Abigail R.

Plath-Morgan
English Composition
Dr. Amy Lynch-Biniek
5/2/16
Should We Defund Planned Parenthood?
Planned Parenthood is often painted as some monster out to push women into having
abortions when in actuality Margret Sanger opened her clinic with the hope of helping women
avoid being in a position where she would need to have an abortion as well as providing a safe
environment for women to receive an abortion who would seek it elsewhere and likely die due to
unsanitary operations. Today most of Planned Parenthood works to prevent disease and
unwanted pregnancy and none of the governments money goes to abortion. Though pro-life
news outlets would have you believe Planned Parenthood is selling body parts I wouldnt believe
everything you see on the internet. Though many politicians believe that Planned Parenthood
would be easy to replace with general clinics this is an ideology fought in fallacy. Think again
next time you consider defunding Planned Parenthood consider the other point of view.
In recent years there has been a serious movement to defund Planned Parenthood, the
largest provider of womens health care in America. Unfortunately this is nothing new and
Planned Parenthood has been under fire since its conception in the early 20 century. Founded by
th

Margret Sanger, who as described in the America First hand article, My Fight for Birth Control
fought against laws which prevented doctors and nurses from educating their patients about birth
control options as well as the right to a safe abortion. Margret Sanger motivated by her time as a
nurse when she saw underclass women die due to unsafe or self-administered abortions. Margret
along with her sister and another nurse started up the first American Birth Control League

against the law educating about contraception and providing safe abortions to women who
needed them it can be argued that Planned Parenthood has saved many womens lives in this
time period. For her part in founding American Birth Control League giving what were at the
time illegal abortions however much safer they were and her part in illegally providing married
couples with the means to avoid having a child they couldnt afford to care for and these are the
reasons Margret Sanger found herself in prison on multiple occasions. According to Planned
Parenthoods The Birth Control Pill-A History Margret Sanger helped fund the creation of oral
contraception, which once completed was revolutionary and can be attributed to the greater
presence of women in school and the work place as it allowed women to choose when they have
children so married women could remain in the work force. Planned Parenthood is not nor has it
ever been the heartless abortionist as it is so often depicted as Margret Sanger believed in helping
women in the vary complex situation of an unwanted pregnancy, though her overall goal was to
help women avoid that situation to begin with.
Today, Margret Sanger would be proud to know that only 3% of Planned Parenthood
services today are abortions as stated in Planned Parenthoods 2013-14 Annual Report. The idea
that Planned Parenthood is simply an abortion clinic is Victorian inspired propaganda. A majority
of what Planned Parenthood revolves around testing and treatment for sexually transmitted
infections, around 42% of services rendered and providing birth control to prevent unwanted
pregnancies which amount to 34% of services, as intended Planned Parenthood has been helping
people from being in a position where they would need to make the difficult decision of whether
to have a child they are incapable of caring for. More recently Planned Parenthood has been
involved in cancer screenings and research and have been affiliated with the Susan B. Colman
foundation as well 9% of funding has gone into cancer screenings. Treating sexually transmitted

illnesses and screening for cancer and it is arguable that a majority of planned parenthoods action
have been to save lives an idea which almost directly opposes the propagandized notion that
Planned Parenthood is somehow against life. Yet many people who call themselves Pro-life
specifically oppose planned parenthood and have been attempting to ensure that any and all
government funding cannot go to planned parenthood regardless of its work preventing diseases.
Many Pro-life advocates oppose planned parenthood because they equate it to the
government paying for abortions, this is another piece of falsity perpetuated propaganda, in
actuality, due to the Hyde amendment it is illegal to use government funding for abortion
services, save for the few exceptions of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother. The Hyde
amendment is attached to Medicaid the primary government provider of health care to the
underprivileged in William Slatens article he explains that 80% of the money Planned
Parenthood receives from the government are reimbursements for services Planned Parenthood
rendered to patients with Medicaid as their insurance provider. It isnt like the government is just
giving money to Planned Parenthood regardless of what conservatives would have you believe
the argument of whether or not to defund planned parenthood is more akin to a debate of an
insurance company trying to decide whether or not to cover a specialized clinic only in this case,
that insurance provider is the government and that clinic is Planned Parenthood. Planned
Parenthood is receiving Medicaid money because patients with Medicaid decided to go there, the
government is not simply handing them money.
Another matter that anti-planned parenthood propaganda has been pushing is the idea
that Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts. This allocation stems from a video posted by the
anti-abortion group the Center for Medical Progress. Said video shows the Senior Director of
Medical Service Deborah Nucatola having lunch with who she believed at the time to be

employees of a biotech company who were inquiring about the possibility of receiving fetal
tissue donations. The 30-100 dollars mentioned in the video are not profit for Planned
Parenthood but compensation for expenses needed to ship tissue. It is illegal to receive payment
in exchange for donated tissue of any kind, however receiving reimbursement for costs acquired
in the storage and transport of the tissue is permitted. David Levitan asserts that the 30-100
dollars can be easily accounted for as reimbursement for expenses related to handling and
transportation of tissue, expressing that any hospital would require 100-500 dollar
reimbursement for handling tissue. The credibility of this video the claims made regarding its
findings are further called into question when criminal incitement is involved.
Recently, according to Alex Altmans article for Time magazine, the anti-Planned
Parenthood videos producer David Daliden is currently under criminal incitement in the state of
Texas having been charged with, one second-degree felony charge of tampering with a
governmental record, and a misdemeanor charge related to the prohibition of the purchase and
sale of human organs for which he could spend a lot of time in jail. In order to trick Planned
Parenthood Daliden trained his anti-abortion activists who would pose as representatives for a
fake bio tech company he called Biomax with business cards, state fillings he networked into
planned parenthood and used a fake ID used with his alias to fool Planned Parenthood. This fake
ID Daliden claims Altman said followed standard conventions of investigative journalism, and
was not aware a similar scenario that prompted a felony charge. However a Planned Parenthood
spokesperson expressed that malicious intent is behind it which makes it illegal in Texas. This
opponent of Planned Parenthoods intent was plainly malicious and had the hope to doup the
public through heavily edited and ultimately illegally procured footage of what he viewed as a
sting video. Daved Dalidan broke the law and went out of his way to harm an ultimately helpful

organization for reasons unrelated to an actual belief that Planned Parenthood was breaking the
law, this being his political opposition to abortion as a general practice as evident by the fact that
it was produced for the center for medical progress, a specifically anti-abortion group could be
seen as guilt of malicious intent. Daliden also received a misdemeanor charge for a letter sent to
planned parenthood a week after the recorded meeting offering $1,600 per specimen, a price that
would be too much to count for reimbursement, planned parenthood gave no response but in
Texas it is illegal to make to offer of the sale regardless of wither it was accepted or not. In a
twist of situational irony the Daliden might go to prison for the very crime he intended prove was
occurring. Some politicians believe that regardless of the videos lack of credibility the scandal
alone is enough to shrink away from the organization.
Pro -life politicians such as Senator McConnell have made the case that government
funding should have to go to Community Health Centers in place of what McConnell calls
scandal-plagued Planned Parenthood. Senator Harry Reid opposes defunding planned
parenthood and in a news dispatch questions the moral compass of the republican party and
talks about a shortage in America for primary care providers and expressing that most health
centers are already at capacity according to the Kaiser Family Foundation and Texas upon
defunding planned parenthood that clinics would need to increase up to 537 percent to keep up
with the need for health care. When Indiana defunded Planned Parenthood and made the same
argument and the only available providers were places like homeless shelters and prisons. Reid
states They [Republicans] are trying to shift the responsibility to someone who doesnt exist in
reference to replacing Planned Parenthood with community health centers. There are states that
have already defunded Planned Parenthood, Texas had been the first and only a year after ward
in 2013 a study was done to discover the immediate effects.

According to the study Women's experiences after Planned Parenthood's exclusion from
a family planning program in Texas, January 1st 2013 Texas was the first state in the United
States of America to ban Planned Parenthood from the family planning program before the ban
40% of participants of the Womens Health Program went to Planned Parenthood. The Womens
Health program is a state run program which covers women between the ages of 18-44 with an
income at or below 185% of the federal poverty line for expenses related to family planning.
This study specifically analyzed the impact of the Planned Parenthood ban by analyzing women
participating in Womens Health Program who used the injected form of contraception before
and after the ban Due to this specific pooling of the study only a small amount of participants of
the womens health program were involved. The study found that participants returned to
Planned Parenthood after the ban 14.4% of the time in Houston an extreme difference form the
77% the year before. Most participants in Midland however returned 64.8% of the time in
comparison to 75% before the ban. A majority of those who returned to Planned Parenthood
returned on time. Out of all participants of the study 80% obtained the contraceptive dose but
only 56.8% managed to receive it on time and without extra cost whereas the year before the ban
it was 92% who could. That is an extreme drop, going from nearly all participants being able to
receive the dose on time and without undue stress or expense to a bit more than half. That would
be a major impact Common barriers were; trouble getting an appointment, requiring another
appointment, required a physical exam or the injection was out of stock and unauthorized
copays. The findings contradict the idea that eliminating Planned Parenthood from public
funding does have negative impacts.
These numbers might not seem large but these are only immediate impacts, all of these
problems would, on the national level result in thousands of underprivileged women being

unable to receive necessary and reliable contraception without great financial burden forcing us
back into the very place Margret Sanger fought so hard to pull us out of. Planned Parenthood is
not just some heartless corporate abortionist like its motto Care. No matter what. Implies
Planned Parenthood seeks to help women receive the reproductive care necessary regardless of
the situation. Since its founding Planned Parenthoods goal has been to help women avoid being
in a position where she needs to make that difficult decision of what to do in an unwanted
pregnancy. Regardless of what you have heard, Planned Parenthood does not receive government
funding for abortion except in special circumstances and only gets any federal money when
women on Medicaid chose to go there. Planned Parenthood does not sell fetal tissue though it
does receive reimbursement for the cost of shipping the tissue safely as any medical facility may.
Planned Parenthood cannot just be replaced, defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused
difficulty for lower income women seeking care to do so further would widen the problem.
Works Cited
"20132014 Annual Report." PlannedParenthood.org. Planned Parenthood Federation of
America, 30 June 2014. Web.
Altman, Alex. "How the Planned Parenthood Video Mastermind Got Charged." Time. Time, 26
Jan. 2016. Web. 02 May 2016.
Burner, David, and John M. Giggie. "My Fight for Birth Control." America Firsthand. Ed.
Anthony Marcus. 9th ed. Vol. 2. New York: St. Martin's, 1989. 171-77. Print.
Centerformedprogress. "Full Footage: Planned Parenthood Uses Partial-Birth Abortions to Sell
Baby Parts." YouTube. YouTube, 2015. Web. 02 May 2016.

Knowles, Jon. "The Birth Control Pill - A History." Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood
Federation of America, Mar. 2013. Web.
Levitan, Dave. "Unspinning the Planned Parenthood Video." FactCheckorg. 21 July 2015. Web.
07 Apr. 2016.
Marcotte, Amanda. "6 Things to Say to Your Conservative Relatives Who Buy Into Anti-Planned
Parenthood Propaganda." Alternet. 04 Aug. 2015. Web. 06 Apr. 2016.
Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood. The Moral Property of Women: A History of Birth
Control Politics in America. University of Illinois Press, 2002. 242278. Print...
"Planned Parenthood's Taxpayer Funding - United States House Committee on Oversight and
Government Reform." United States House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.
Saletan, William. "The GOP Argument for Defunding Planned Parenthood Is Completely
Incoherent." The Slate. The Slate. Web. 07 Apr. 2016.
Woo, C. Junda, Hasanat Alamgir, and Joseph E. Potter. "Women's Experiences after Planned
Parenthood's Exclusion from a Family Planning Program in Texas." Contraception 93.4
(2016): 298-302. Science Direct. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.