This Democratic Senate and White House are clearly willing to disappoint their base on many issues. They've agreed to spending cuts and tax cuts for the wealthy, scrapped a public option, and continued warrantless wiretaps, indefinite detention of terrorism suspects and unnecessary wars on Arab dictators. But in last week's budget debate we glimpsed the party's unshakable core: dedication to the abortion lobby.
President Obama had promised to veto the House-passed bill funding government through the end of the fiscal year, and Majority Leader Harry Reid made it clear the Senate would never pass it. But the final agreement -- with most of the cuts Republicans wanted, plus funding for school vouchers in Washington -- proved that the Democratic opposition was grounded not in Keynesian fears of spending cuts or liberal concern over service cuts.
The deal breaker for Democrats had been the rider cutting off federal funds for Planned Parenthood. As a "senior Democratic source" told the Huffington Post on Friday, "The cuts will be hard for us to swallow, but we won't bend on Title X" -- that is, federal funding of Planned Parenthood. "Reid doesn't even have to go back to the caucus to ask on that one."
Reid said so himself Friday: "We are not -- we are not! -- bending on women's health." When you consider the flexibility of Reid on other issues, this shows extraordinary devotion.
Republican rank and file were equally insistent on not funding the abortion provider. But in the horse trading over spending cuts Friday night, GOP leaders agreed not to filibuster a Senate amendment next week to reinsert Planned Parenthood funding. That was enough for Democrats -- the deal was done.
John Maynard Keynes would be horrified at the thought of cutting government spending at a time of 9.2 percent unemployment, and many liberals expressed anger at the agreement. But Planned Parenthood celebrated: "American women made their voices heard," the group's website trumpeted over the weekend.
On all the big fights during Obama's presidency, Planned Parenthood has gotten what it wants: abortion subsidies in Obamacare, two Supreme Court justices who will uphold Roe v. Wade, and staunchly pro-choice Kathleen Sebelius at the Department of Health and Human Services, among other things.
It's no wonder. Planned Parenthood is no simple health care clinic -- it is a part of the Democratic Party. And despite the talk about "women's health," it is about abortion.
Planned Parenthood points out that most of its services do not involve abortion, but this misses the point. First, if Planned Parenthood didn't provide abortions, there would be very little energy to strip its funding. Second, almost all of its services for pregnant women are abortions, according to its own fact sheet published last month: It performed 332,278 abortions in 2009, while serving 7,021 prenatal clients and referring 977 parents to adoption services.
Liberals argue that Planned Parenthood's federal funding -- a bit more than a third of its billion-dollar budget -- does not fund its abortions, but only pays for other worthy services. But that's like the notorious gambler who asks you for money to feed his family. If you decline on the grounds that he'll just gamble the money away, he retorts, "No, man, I've already got my gambling money -- it's the food money I need."
Planned Parenthood already has its aborting money, it's the HIV test money it needs from the taxpayers.
Read more at the Washington Examiner
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8 comments:
As a pro-choice woman I am frightened by the prospect that my right to choose is being threatened. I may never exercise that right but who can decide what I do with my body but me. Certainly not anyone else and certainly not any one in government.
-Chelsea Reid
Nobody is threatening your right to kill your baby the issue is not to fund it with tax payer money.
Amen 1:19 I sure don't want to pay for it. Chelsie is a prime example of the left spin the facts so it looks like the right is trying to kill women. Forget about the truth of killing babies.
Your so-called 'right' to choose isn't one at all, Chelsea.
It was manufactured by an activist court, and is really just a verbal phrase.
When you say "who can decide what I do with my body but me?", you can't be thinking-- you're just repeating a phrase you've heard so many times it has become one of your talking points.
If you were killing yourself, that would be what you were doing with YOUR body.
But what you're talking about is killing another human being.
That's not a 'choice'. It's murder.
Gentlemen. Would you speak to your daughter or wife or mother with such blatant disrespect?
Just because you disagree with someone, does not mean they are morally inferior to you. Please spread that message throught the GOP for me.
* "throughout" My apologies.
Disrespect?
They're just telling the truth.
And there's nothing disrespectful here-- just honest truth, which is what love is all about.
If somebody's messing up and you love them you tell them the truth.
If you kill your baby, you'll regret it the rest of your life.
If you're really 'Pro-choice', exercise that choice BEFORE you have sex, not after.
The Elites who run the world will NEVER allow the opportunity to kill a fetus to be overturned or denied. They love the idea of little people killing their fetus.
They merely talk about possibly changing the status to get us to embrace the idea of killing a fetus as a right.
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