Funding Planned Parenthood

I must confess I’m having a tiny problem with this “Planned Parenthood” issue. Make no mistake, I’m well aware that federal money is not funding abortions there, and even if it were I’m not sure I would object to it doing so. I certainly have no objection to funding birth control.

But the arguments that “this is the only place that many disadvantaged women have for basic health care” confuses me. Why is an outfit named “Planned Parenthood” providing “basic health care" for women? What is Medicaid for? What was “health care reform” all about? This argument about “basic health care,” to me, weakens their argument because it sounds like Planned Parenthood may have lost sight of its basic mission.

And where do "disadvantaged" males go to get their basic health care?

One woman was speaking in defense of funding and spoke of a woman who was at risk of cancer and said that Planned Parenthood was the only place that she could get cancer screenings. Cancer screening? I realize that women have some risks that men do not, but do men not need health screenings? Isn’t this just a little bit of an issue of gender discrimination?

I emphatically do not think that Planned Parenthood should be defunded, the amount of money is miniscule in any case, but some of the arguments strike me as overreach. Some of the arguments, in fact, seem to me to weaken the case for continued funding. If government is indeed funding "basic health care" that is limited based on gender discrimination, then I would have a problem with that.

Upate: see Title X Family Planning, by all means continue funding.

It appears that the rhetoric about “this is the only place that many disadvantaged women have for basic health care” is, to say the least, overstatement, and that the "cancer screening" is not general, but is specifically screening for cervical cancer. That casts a different light on the subject, and clearly discrimination is not an issue here. Glad I heard the reference to "Title Ten" and looked it up.