GOP's Phony War on Planned Parenthood

Mary Sanchez provides the ugly details in The Baltimore Sun.

Oppose it or not -- and I do -- abortion is a medical procedure that ends an unwanted or health-threatening pregnancy. If we want to encourage the trend toward decreasing numbers of abortions in this country -- and no one in their right mind wants to see more of them -- we need to bolster women's reproductive health services. That means ensuring wide access to sex education and contraceptives. (It also means honestly admitting that an overwhelming majority of Americans accept that abortion should be permitted when a pregnancy is the result of incest or rape, or when the health of the mother is threatened.)

If you oppose abortion and you're not ready to promote the most effective ways of preventing unwanted pregnancies, you're not serious. If you call for "defunding" Planned Parenthood -- as virtually the entire Republican Party does -- you are attacking a leading purveyor of contraceptives and information about how to use them for women of limited economic resources. You're also threatening to shut down 700 clinics that provide crucial preventative health measures like pap smears and refer women for mammograms.

About 85 to 90 percent of Planned Parenthood's work is providing these basic health services, often to low-income women without access to health insurance. That's according to analysis of the organization done by PolitiFact. Abortions add up to about 3 percent of the organization's services, and they are not funded with federal money.

A recent vote in the U.S. Senate to defund Planned Parenthood, which failed, called for redirecting the monies to other women's health facilities that did not provide abortions. The problem is that there are far too few such clinics to meet the need. Moreover, the effort misunderstands how Planned Parenthood receives $528 million annually: mostly through Medicaid reimbursements and competitive Title X family planning grants.

The plain truth is that the Republicans who wish to destroy Planned Parenthood -- and Bush is far from the most vociferous -- really don't care that the bulk of its work has nothing to do with abortion. Nor do they care about standards of accuracy in the accusations they make against the organization.