In case anyone else is checking the news obsessively to see if the government has shut down yet, I thought I would post this handy chart that shows what Planned Parenthood actually does.
That’s what John Boehner and the Tea Party Republic want to destroy, and they are willing to shut down the whole damn government to do it. And if you are a low-income woman with no other source of health care services available to you, that’s just too bad.
I keep waiting for someone to jump up and explain this to me. Can the Republican leadership really be so thoroughly morally bankrupt?
There are plenty of right-wing Xangans. Somebody send them over here to explain.
Transvestite Rabbit 
I’ll wait for their answer with you. This whole thing is an outrage.
Planned Parenthood is not a struggling non-profit. Theoretically, they could survive without government subsidies, but why should they? It’s not like they’re selling oil or anything.
@madhousewife – It’s not struggling because it relies on Title X funds. Take those funds away and it will not be struggling, it will be gone.
@transvestite_rabbit – It gets about one-third of its money from government grants. Take that money away, and it will struggle for a while, but it will not be gone. It existed before before Title X, and it can exist some more. Unless it just isn’t interested in providing reproductive health services unless the government helps it eat the cost, which I don’t believe is the case. Now, is this the hill I would choose to die on as a cold-blooded fiscal conservative? No. But I don’t fear for the future of women’s health if Planned Parenthood loses its government funding. Which may have something to do with why I hate women. But I don’t presume to speak for all right-wingers.
Ideology has no place in a budget bill. Shame on them for even making it a factor, much less one they refuse to negotiate/compromise on. They’re so afraid of alienating their Tea Party supporters, who will vote them out of office come next election, they are refusing to hear what the rest of us are saying. Want to debate the survival of Planned Parenthood without its government grants? Fine, but don’t do it at the expense of the rest of us who depend on our federal jobs to live. Not the military families who will be crushed not only bc they’ll be working without pay for their families, many from the existing discomforture of deployment, but who will, should the most terrible tragedy happen and they die during the furlouge, not be getting their death gratuities paid out to their families until sometime in the foreseeable future when Congress gets this mess settled. Fix the budget now, fight the unwinnable abortion war later.
@madhousewife – Sure, the organization can survive with 1/3 of its funds gone. It will just have to quit caring for women who can’t pay and serve rich women instead. That will solve their whole budget problem. You wouldn’t die on that hill as a fiscal conservative because it has nothing to do with fiscal conservatism. Eliminating women’s access to contraceptives and other reproductive health services = more women having babies they can’t properly care for. That, combined with massive cuts to programs that help parents care for children they can’t afford = massive increase in impoverished families = massive increase in other costs, like emergency room use, law enforcement, and prisons.
@transvestite_rabbit – Right. Because services for poor women aren’t worth providing unless the government is involved. Once the government is out of the picture, people just stop caring. And of course it’s not about fiscal conservatism–not for these folks. To a certain extent it’s political grandstanding, and to another extent it’s sincere moral opposition to abortion (even though the funds are technically not for abortions). But it’s also not a life-or-death situation for reproductive health care. That’s my opinion, and yours is the exact opposite. But you asked an impossible question. There isn’t an explanation for Republicans cutting off Planned Parenthood that you would buy, other than the one you’ve already come up with. Actually, I guess that makes it technically a rhetorical question, not an impossible question. But whatever. I’ve given you all I have.
@madhousewife – No, people don’t stop caring when the government stops paying, but the organization stops being able to pay the bills when 1/3 of their money vanishes. Do you think they won’t be forced to shut clinics down with such a huge decrease in revenue? Maybe my question should be, why must the Republicans conduct their political grandstanding on the backs of women? I’m not buying the sincere opposition to abortion argument–Title X also funds organizations that provide family planning services but do not do abortions, and lacking PP’s high profile, they’re going under for sure.
I am too far into the throes of my own problems to try to make sense of any of this. I’m sure that makes me a bad person. I’ve just started to realize that the Pod People are all Republicans. But you know I’m not a believer in huge governments that tax everyone to death and spend their money trying to right wrongs that can’t be righted. Outlawing Planned Parenthood would make me very angry. Cutting funding for Planned Parenthood makes me more…eh. Shutting down the government so we can all discuss Planned Parenthood makes me very sad.
@transvestite_rabbit – Well, this is all academic in any case because Planned Parenthood will not be defunded. The GOP just likes to scare people like you because they can.