Planned Parenthood: Keep Abortion in Health Care, Force Taxpayer Funding
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 9, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion business but, when it comes to the health care debate and public policy, it rarely talks about abortion. Leading officials normally focus on the less controversial women’s health care but one staffer is unusually frank in a new blog post.
The pro-abortion group typically glosses over taxpayer-funding of abortions in its communications, even to its own members, on the health care debate.
Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards publicly says health care shouldn’t leave out women’s concerns, but she almost never says abortion should be included.
Laurie Rubiner, the vice president of public policy and advocacy at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, is more frank in a blog posting from late last week that Richards emailed to her supporters today.
"Abortion is a legal medical procedure in this country, and therefore Planned Parenthood believes it should be part of the health care system," she admits.
She says it is wrong for pro-life advocates to "insist that, if there is a public option, there be a strict and total ban on abortion coverage," adding "this is ridiculous."
Rubiner also admits that Planned Parenthood wants to eventually overturn the Hyde Amendment to prohibits taxpayer-funding of abortion in the Medicaid program.
"For many years there has been a ban on the use of federal funds to pay for abortions" and, while "we vehemently disagree with this policy," "we understand that this is the law of the land and until we have the political ability to change it, we have to compromise," she writes.
In the blog post, the leading Planned Parenthood official goes on to blast the nation’s Catholic bishops as "conspiracy theorists" telling "whoppers."
"Catholic bishops are persuading their parishioners that health care reform will mean that every single American is going to have to pay for their neighbors’ abortion," she writes.
"I am trying really hard to understand what it is anti-choice hard-liners want, other than to simply kill health care reform," she laments. "I wish someone would explain to me where their middle ground really is, and stop shifting it every time I think I’m standing still."
Rubiner closes her blog with another candid admission, that a greater percentage of Planned Parenthood’s "services" include abortion than other officials are willing to admit.
While other Planned Parenthood staffers often say that just two or three percent of what Planned Parenthood does is related to abortion, Rubiner says as much as 10 percent of Planned Parenthood’s business is abortion.
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