Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards has said that defunding the nation's leading abortion provider would hurt “expectant mothers and newborns.”
Ohio Governor John Kasich signed a bill on Sunday depriving Planned Parenthood of $1.3 million a year in government revenue. Under the new law's terms, no one who performs elective abortions can receive state health funds.
In a turn of phrase that seems less than obvious, Richards responded that, by signing the bill, “John Kasich is proudly eliminating care for expectant mothers and newborns.”
It's nice to see Planned Parenthood worried about the babies.
But it seems the Buckeye state, like the rest of the country, has more than enough health care providers to handle all of Planned Parenthood's non-lethal services.
“The Ohio Department of Health has at least 150 other sub-grantees and contractors for the affected grants and projects addressing such issues as new born babies, infant mortality, expectant mothers, violence against women, and minority HIV/AIDS,” according to Gov. Kasich's spokesman, Joe Andrews.
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Ohio women will not wander the streets, searching vainly for someone else capable of performing a pap smear. The state simply decided to fund caregivers who do not also run a sideline that sends 21,186 fetal cadavers a year to area landfills where they are treated, in state Attorney General Mike DeWine's phrase, like “common…trash.”
Despite Cecile Richards' head-scratching chutzpah, Planned Parenthood seems much less concerned about the well-being of newborn babies when it affects its main, non-governmental source of revenue: abortion. Then, it is Planned Parenthood that actively lobbies for the right to deny services to newborns.
In March 2013, Florida legislators asked Alisa Lapolt Snow, a lobbyist representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, whether abortionists should try to save the life of a baby accidentally born alive during a botched abortion. Snow, in turn, asked legislators to kindly allow abortionists to passively watch those newborn babies gasp for breath until they die.
Snow was asked by a member of the Florida House of Representatives, “What happens in a situation where a baby is alive, breathing on a table, moving. What do your physicians do at that point?”
Snow eventually replied, “That decision should be between the patient and the health care provider.” In other words, if the mother can be cajoled into granting her “consent” to let the child die – even a viable, newborn baby outside the womb – the abortionist should be able to deny life-saving medical attention.
Sadly, this is not an aberration but the official position of a representative in Planned Parenthood's employ and reflective of the broader abortion industry. Live Action exposed numerous late-term abortionists admitting they would allow a newborn child to die untreated.
Ohio legislators said, in effect, “If you won't treat newborn children, we'll find someone who will.”
The spirit of reverence and celebration of life embodied in this law is to be celebrated, and Gov. Kasich should be commended for signing it.
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