Ad Claims Vote Against Planned Parenthood Funding Caused Cancer

State   |   Andrew Bair   |   Jul 11, 2012   |   6:31PM   |   Washington, DC

Pro-abortion Montana Senator Jon Tester is in the race for his political life. He faces a tough challenge from pro-life Republican Congressman Denny Rehberg.

In Tester’s latest attempt to hold on to his Senate seat, he has released an ad in which a cancer survivor insinuates if Tester had not been her Senator she may have died. The assertion stems from Rehberg’s votes to cut Title X funding and funding to community health centers, both of which also support abortion providers, including Planned Parenthood.  The desperate attack ad shows anything but a confident incumbent Senator headed for reelection.

Rehberg noted at the time that funding for breast cancer screenings for low-income women would still be readily available under Medicaid.

“The majority of the money for the low-income care actually comes from Medicaid, so it’s a duplication,” Rehberg said. “The community health center in Kalispell has access to Medicaid,” along with state and local funds.

Unlike Medicaid, which falls under the pro-life Hyde Amendment, which bars certain federal funds from being used to perform abortions, funding contained in Obamacare for community health centers does not fall within the confines of the Hyde Amendment.

Congressman Rehberg has consistently stood against taxpayer funding of abortion. In addition to voting to de-fund Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, Rehberg voted for the No Taxpayer Funding of Abortion Act, the Protect Life Act and in favor of the repeal of the pro-abortion Obama healthcare law. A consistent majority of Americans opposes the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortion.

Senator Tester, on the other hand, supports taxpayer funding of abortion, including federal funding for Planned Parenthood. It is ironic that Senator Tester would use a breast cancer survivor in defense of his support for the nation’s largest abortion provider, which has been called out time and time again for merely referring for mammograms, not actually performing them. Tester has also received the backing of Planned Parenthood’s political arm.

After a very public meltdown in relations with Planned Parenthood, the Susan G. Komen Foundation ultimately offered a grant to a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Arizona to provide mammograms using a mobile mammography unit.

However, Randy O’Bannon of the National Right to Life Committee told LifeNews, there’s “no indication that Planned Parenthood has actually installed mammogram machines at its clinics. Mammograms will apparently only be available when the mobile unit is scheduled to visit, and it isn’t clear who will own or run the mobile center.”

“Though Planned Parenthood touts the large number of “breast cancer exams” it performs each year (nearly 750,000 for 2010 in its latest annual report), it usually neglects to tell people that, as a rule, it doesn’t do mammograms, but only manual breast exams. For those patients to actually get mammography, they had to go elsewhere,” he continued. “Again, nothing here tells us that Planned Parenthood has actually gone as far as to actually purchase a mammogram machine or to hire the staff to operate them or interpret the results. The machine and the mobile unit would obviously cost much more than $21,000. The grant apparently simply covers the cost of those Planned Parenthood patients receiving the services from the mobile unit.”

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The latest Rasmussen Poll shows Rehberg leading Tester by two points, although his lead falls within the margin of error. In the same poll, Mitt Romney leads President Obama in Montana by a nine-point margin.