Commentary: Taxpayers should not fund Planned Parenthood
The commentary prominently run in the Pilot on Aug. 2, “Planned Parenthood Getting a Bad Rap,” contained numerous false and inflammatory statements that beg to be addressed.
The writer, retired Judge Lynne Riddle, claimed, “Planned Parenthood does more good for basic women’s health and reproductive liberty than any other nonprofit, public service entity I know.”
She also declared, “Millions of American women (teens, moms, the elderly) would have no basic healthcare without Planned Parenthood.”
But woman across the country have literally thousands of healthcare delivery options. Community health clinics also provide pre-natal care, childhood immunizations, asthma treatments and cancer screenings.
She also maintains that abortions are a small percent of the services Planned Parenthood delivers, but some sources say that abortions account for a high percentage of Planned Parenthood’s income.
Riddle decries what she calls a lack of respect from people who do not support public funding for Planned Parenthood and accuses the YouTube video that opens by saying it will tell the viewer about “real-life harvesting and selling of baby parts” of being “disingenuous and appallingly inflammatory.” She decries the recently undercover video as “false,” “demeaning” and “hateful.”
Apparently she is upset that the video was edited. Every story on television news is edited, but I don’t know if she finds that hateful.
Riddle is convinced that baby organs and limbs — what she terms fetal tissue — are important for medical research.
However, Dr. Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians disputes this.
“Let’s be clear: selling organs of aborted babies for fetal tissue research is unnecessary and prolongs human suffering,” she told the Breitbart News site. “Fetal tissue research, like embryonic stem cell research, has failed to produce a single successful treatment for human disease, and both have been associated with significant side effects including overgrowth of cells and the need for immunosuppressive chemotherapy.”
Far from getting a bad rap, Planned Parenthood is praised by Hollywood stars and people like Riddle. If those people are so enamored of the practices of Planned Parenthood, let them fund it privately. But it is perverse and a sign of a sick culture that our tax dollars are going to this barbaric practice.
JANET GEEHR lives in Newport Beach.