Well this will be fun! Before you get to excited, I will not be talking about when life starts and this is not a direct abortion article. This is about balance and ensuring that people make an informed decision. That happens so rarely these days. So here are the facts about Planned Parenthood and the recent budget battle. It should be noted that our federal debt grew by more than the proposed savings in the same time we were debating how to trim the fat.
Republicans were not trying to defund all of Planned Parenthood (PP). They were actually just trying to defund PP in Washington DC. In DC, PP is the largest provider of abortions in the city. They were looking to PP savings of about 3.5 million dollars. Hell, compared to the 38 Billion (current Budget fight) plus the 4 Billion in last round of CR drama, we are talking about 3.5 million in a 42 Billion pot. That is like saying, saving 42 Billion when we will spend 1.4 trillion over our income, just this year, is a lot of money.
Before we continue, I must make this one clarification. Planned Parenthood DOES NOT provide abortions in Utah. If someone going to a PP clinic in Utah wants an abortion, they will be referred to the one clinic that does in Utah. I point this out since a large percentage of my readers are in Utah.
Also I must post a few numbers on PP nationally related to abortion and then I am done with that part of the discussion, for now! Between 1996 and 2005, the number of abortions in the U.S. fell from 1.36 million to 1.21. In 2008, PP performed 332,278 abortions. This means that PP provided less than 25% of all abortions nationally. We can argue the merits of abortion and when life starts etc, in another post. I wanted to focus on PP and the budget debate in the last week.
PP in DC operates on a 7 million budget (2009) according to their own data. This means 50% of funding would come from federal funding. The DC centers, in line with the federal numbers provide only 4.5% of activates in abortion or abortion related care. Nationally this number is 3%. The rest is made up of cancer screenings, for which they receive a specific grant from the Federal government each year, STD treatment for men and women and contraception, to prevent unwanted pregnancies and STD’s. Given that the majority of PP users are at or below the poverty level, it stands to reason that unwanted pregnancies alone save uncountable billions in state/federal aid in raising these unwanted children for years and perhaps generations. However, if this country was less of a nanny state, we would save uncounted billions as well.
PP is not solely funded by the federal government. Many other grants from private business and private individuals contribute the PP budget annually. For those who can afford it, PP also prorates and charges for services. As a result, one can argue that this additional subsidy from the private sector helps save even more for the tax payer since PP is not directly using government funds as the sole source for providing services for the poor in our communities. While this argument is good, it is also facially false. Most of these private donations are tax deductable and so we, the tax payers, still take the hit in other ways. I have personally used PP services twice in my life. Both were for STD testing, prior to my first marriage and just after my second. I did this as a way to know, for certain, I was being safe and careful with my mate. I paid for these services, as I am not the average user of PP services, and while they hold this information confidential, I believe it is important to disclose any potential conflicts to my readers.
That being said, I will not conclude what is right or wrong in relation to abortion and PP funding, nationally or in the local DC case. My goal was to ensure you, the reader, were better informed about the real circumstances of this last budget debate. Having hopefully accomplished this, I leave it to you to decide if the debate over PP was necessary. I will however, tell you what I think. My regular readers know, I advocated that every budget take an across the board cut, this would have included PP. Defunding this one organization for providing vital services to an under-served group of people seems overly dramatic. Especially in light that PP is doing nothing illegal. They do not use federal funding for abortions and abortion is still legal in this country. If we want to change those paradigms, stick to getting the courts to overturn their previous rulings. That is the appropriate venue for this discussion.
Right or wrong government must focus on reducing spending. Right or wrong, PP is not doing anything illegal. Right or wrong, we must turn our attention to making change in the right venues. There is room for debate about the scope of all of the issues that surround Planned Parenthood. This year’s budget may be a place to argue about some of these issues, but trying to pass a budget that is half over and 18 months late, was not the appropriate place.
I think that its about time they started working on Next Year's budget cause this one is obviously screwed up already; maybe, just maybe with the extra time they will actually come up with something that will actually make a difference.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to clarify something. You said, "Most of these private donations are tax deductable and so we, the tax payers, still take the hit in other ways."
ReplyDeleteYou make this statement in discussion of the correlation between tax payers and fiscal responsibility for PP.
Then you said, "Right or wrong, PP is not doing anything illegal."
Something being legal does not make it moral or ethical. People have a problem with being fiscally responsible for policy they deem immoral or unethical. Even if the majority says something is acceptable, that doesn't make it so (ask any minority).
Now, for a hole in the fiscal responsibility argument. In the book Freakonomics the authors (two economists of conflicting political ideology) decide to analyze the decrease in crime in New York in the 90's. They make two statements before providing their argument, first their analysis is corollary. Second they are not expressing a political view with their analysis, just providing an explanation of what they found.
My poorly worded paraphrase:
After Roe V Wade, abortion became a legal method of contraception. The number of Abortions performed rose across the U.S. (partially for the obvious reason, who is going to admit they had one if it's unlawful). It is assumed that many of these were "unwanted" children. Many of todays violent criminals have psychologies that include and "unwanted child" syndrome.
The number of abortions going up had a net effect of decreasing unwanted children. The decrease in unwanted children decreased the number of persons that have a psychological issue (an unwanted child syndrome if you will) that could potentially become predatory. Because of this crime fell. Others have pointed out that a positive net benefit will have been seen here, and in a decrease in the number of people on welfare. The reasoning is that the economically disadvantaged are using PP for birth control. Since the aborted children don't grow up on welfare, they don't become an economic burden for taxpayers.
My question is, doe we as a country believe in economic eugenics?