Former Miss America Contestant: Women Don’t Need Planned Parenthood

National   |   Sarah Zagorski   |   Sep 25, 2015   |   1:26PM   |   Washington, DC

Former Miss America contestant Maria Cahall wrote an op-ed for Live Action News explaining that pageant contestants are often coerced into giving political correct answers when questioned in interviews. She also said she has a message for Miss Tennessee, who recently claimed that women need Planned Parenthood for critical health care.

She said, “I wonder what the staff at the over 9,000 community health centers nationwide have to say about this. These centers provide all the services to women that Planned Parenthood claims to offer (other than abortion, but PP rarely claims that publicly). If we paid any attention to the Senate’s recent bill to defund Planned Parenthood, we would know that the monies (almost half a billion tax dollars, by the way. Yes, you read that correctly. Half a billion.) would have been redirected to these locations.”

As LifeNews previously reported, earlier this week, Miss America contestant Hannah Robison said Planned Parenthood shouldn’t be de-funded even though ten undercover videos show their top executive’s haggling over the cost of aborted babies’ body parts. To an audience of nearly seven million television viewers, Robison said, “I don’t think Planned Parenthood funding should be cut off. The $500 million dollars that gets given to Planned Parenthood every single year goes to female care. It goes for scanning for cancer. It goes for mammograms. And, if we don’t get that funding to Planned Parenthood those women will be out of health care for reproductive causes.”

Cahall also confronted Robison’s claim that Planned Parenthood does mammograms.

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She said, “Planned Parenthood does NOT do mammograms. Out of the 8,000+ facilities in the United States doing mammograms, ZERO of them are operated by PP. Nada. Big, fat, goose egg. If you do not believe me, just do a little research with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. They keep a list of every licensed mammogram facility in the country. You know it’s bad when the liberal Washington Post gives a three out of four Pinocchio rating for the White House’s mammogram lies. Awkward.”

The truth is Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms or breast biopsies or ultrasounds. They don’t help women catch cancer; instead they refer women to legitimate health centers that offer those services. ADF and the Charlotte Lozier Institute reported that there are 13,540 clinics providing whole-woman healthcare in the United States versus the 665 Planned Parenthood facilities. These centers serve all types of women, including those who are homeless, uninsured, and living in poverty. However, Planned Parenthood’s supporters argue that these centers can’t provide the variety of services the abortion company can.

Thankfully, today the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation that would temporarily de-fund Planned Parenthood while an investigation continues into its organ harvesting business. The Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015 (H.R. 3134) passed with a vote of 241 to 187 with 239 Republicans voting for it and three Democrats. Unfortunately, three Republicans voted against the de-funding bill along with 183 Democrats.

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