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Robert Reich

BERKELEY, California, September 17, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Former secretary of labor under the Clinton administration Robert Reich has released a video claiming that to defund Planned Parenthood would hurt the U.S. economy and would be “morally wrong.”

Now professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, Reich characterizes as a “right-wing extremist” anyone who, after seeing undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials trafficking in live babies, seeks to stop tax dollars from going to the abortion giant.

He makes no mention of Planned Parenthood altering abortion methods to sell “intact” babies to research companies.

“It's up to all of us to fight back,” Reich says, because “[a]ny society that respects women must respect their right to control their own bodies.” By the phrase “control their own bodies,” Reich means to abort conceived babies in the womb.

Another euphemism for abortion that Reich uses is “family planning.” He says the video is “about the economics of family planning” – in other words, about the effect free access to abortion has on the U.S. economy.

“Public investments in family planning” – in other words, tax dollars for abortion – “make economic sense,” Reich reasons. He says women who abort their children “can contribute even more to the economy” by joining the workforce.

As proof that abortion is good for the economy, Reich brings up what he calls “Colorado's highly successful family planning program.” For six years, the Colorado Family Planning Initiative has poured tax dollars into abortifacients such as intrauterine devices (IUDs) and contraceptive implants for teens and young adults. Critics say Colorado's “family planning” may have lowered the teen pregnancy rate but is, in effect, promoting greater teen promiscuity.

Planned Parenthood is not primarily a contraception provider. Planned Parenthood is an abortion-based business, and the issue in congressional hearings is whether taxes should go to the nation's largest abortion business, which also traffics in aborted baby parts.

Reich claims that “evidence shows that public investments in family planning result in net public savings of about $13.6 billion a year.” He does not support that claim with any facts. “Public investments” means tax dollars spent; “net public savings” is a hypothetical phrase for what Reich thinks the government would spend in tax dollars if abortion were not universally free and unrestricted.

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Analyst Johannes Jacobse, who serves on the board of directors for The Institute on Religion and Democracy, told LifeSiteNews, “The lie is in the phrase 'Net Public Savings.' … Reich is claiming that abortion and presumably other health care protocols (although Planned Parenthood provides almost none except abortion) prevent federal and state tax dollar expenditures totaling 13.6 billion. That is an astonishing claim, but he provides absolutely no support for the statement or how he arrived at the figure.”

“It is a wild claim only a Keynesian economist would make,” explains Jacobse, who is also a fellow at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. “Keynesians see the government as the engine of economic growth. In their view, too many people are a drain on economic growth.”

Jacobse asks, “Abortion means less public spending because there are less people to feed, clothe, medical expenses, etc. … By this logic, why not abort half the population? Just think of all the money we could save!”

“Reich doesn't understand that wealth emerges from the creativity of people,” Jacobse concludes. “Wealth is created (see the Parable of the Ten Talents). Reich believes wealth is fixed and the government is the steward of the wealth. That's the problem with academics. TheY live and function in a socialist economic environment (tenure).”

Reich published his experiences working for the Clinton administration in a book entitled Locked in the Cabinet. He received criticism for embellishing events with invented dialogue. The paperback release of the memoir revised or omitted the inventions, and Reich explains in a new forward that ''memory is fallible.''

In 2002, Reich ran for governor of Massachusetts. He was the first Democratic candidate for a major political office to support homosexual “marriage.” In 2008, he was appointed a member of President-Elect Barack Obama's economic transition advisory board.