> There's a fight to stop providing public funds for abortion-providers, especially given recent discoveries about, to put it charitably, gaffes and ethical lapses on the part of Planned Parenthood, an organization that exists, both in philosophy and financially, due to the abortions it provides.
Planned Parenthood exists to provide healthcare services to women, full stop. Abortions are only a very small part of those services, legal services I might add.
Progress, as usual, occurs one funeral at a time (old people dying with their no-longer-relevant views).
Planned Parenthood does over 300k abortions per year. The 3% number comes from a dubious counting of 1 abortion being the same thing as handing out 1 bottle of birth control pills or performing one STD test. On the contrary, about 94% of pregnancy cases handled by PP end in abortions.
It's kind of a weird argument to act like abortion isn't core to Planned Parenthood. If it weren't that important, PP could spin abortion services into a separate organization. And then the conscientious objectors out there would have much less to complain about.
> It's kind of a weird argument to act like abortion isn't core to Planned Parenthood.
No, the weird argument is "We shouldn't fund Planned Parenthood because they provide a legal service we don't like."
Same sex marriage got here eventually, the legalization of marijuana will come to pass across the entire country in the next 3-6 years, and abortion too won't be fought over as soon as more conservative voters pass on (which no longer necessitates a republican party that must cater to its extremists).
Conservative talking points and beliefs are almost like zombies; dead, just not knowing it.
Scientifically, we really don't know when a fetus becomes a person - although we all probably agree that it does happen sometime between conception and birth - and since this question will likely never be conclusively answered, there will probably always be a fair number of people opposed to unfettered abortion.
I'm not sure personhood is a scientific question, but there are scientific findings with respect to the properties of a fetus (REM activity, organ development, pain sensitivity) that should inform our culture and ethics.
Very true, but I see even that leading the abortion debate to mirror our current debate on the death penalty - a camp emerges taking the position that a single unintentional death renders the whole practice immoral.
What on earth is weird about not wanting to have government founds go to groups you don't like?
I agree in principle, but abortion is a really stupid place to draw the line. I recognize that legal abortion makes my country a far better place, and likely a far safer one if the theories about the decline in violent crime being partially due to a decline in unwanted children hold any water. I don't have to "like" or "dislike" abortion to recognize the ROI in sound public policy.
When it comes to abortion and contraception, social conservatives want all of the authority and none of the responsibility. I don't want them to have either.
There is probably also a huge ROI in killing homeless and severely mentally ill and disabled people, but we don't because we recognize them as people, who have rights.
We don't have to agree with our opponents to be able to see the arguments from their side.
But fetuses aren't people, and in any event, a vast proportion of pregnancies terminate naturally anyway. Nobody howls in outrage at those, attempts to pass laws to stop them, or composes absurd analogies to compare failed pregnancies to the mass murder of homeless people.
There is no objective basis for a moral judgment here, and in government, objectivity is a requirement for (good) lawmaking.
My problem is not with using politics to fight for what you believe and agree in. My problem is with threatening to shutdown the government if you don't get your way. There's democracy, and then there's being a child and throwing a tantrum. We should expect more from representatives then that.
@humanrebar, you seem to be a a single issue, anti-abortion commenter. The videos against P.P. were clearly edited to put them in the most unfair, dishonest light. I don't believe abortion is that core to PP. Is porn crucial to amazon? You can certainly find porn there but it's not a large part of their business.
> about 94% of pregnancy cases handled by PP end in abortions.
humanrebar, stop lying[1].
In another comment, you praised sceptics and expressed interest in promoting understanding and finding compromise, yet you post lies and cite bogus sources to support your lies. Shameful.
I can buy that the 95% number is overstating things. But please focus on my original point; it's disingenuous to imply that abortion is not at the core of Planned Parenthood's mission. Even the fact-checking article (a little light on new facts, but I can understand its point) you posted says:
"Not all of Planned Parenthood approximately 700 clinics offer prenatal services because prenatal care is not Planned Parenthood's focus."
That's the point behind the number. If even simple prenatal care (vitamins, education, referrals) were part of the focus of Planned Parenthood, they would be tracked and we would see them in the metrics. Even the PoliFact article doesn't address the underlying point... that abortion is a (if not 'the') core part of Planned Parenthood's mission.
3% of the services Planned Parenthood provides are abortion-related: https://twitter.com/emschuch/status/649690759453646848
Also, Planned Parenthood has been found to be doing nothing wrong by offering fetal tissue from abortions at cost, with the permission of the patient:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2015/0928/Planned-Paren...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/congress-planned-parenth...
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/investigations-turn-...
Planned Parenthood exists to provide healthcare services to women, full stop. Abortions are only a very small part of those services, legal services I might add.
Progress, as usual, occurs one funeral at a time (old people dying with their no-longer-relevant views).