This week, a Texas judge ruled that the state could deny Planned Parenthood Medicaid funding. CBS News’ abortion advocate, Kate Smith, reports that the ruling stops Planned Parenthood from “providing non-abortion services to thousands of low-income patients.” CNN’s takeaway is also that thousands of Texans “are slated to lose their health care provider.”
Indeed, this is a tragedy. What Texas needs is a women’s health organization devoted to low-income Americans that doesn’t also want to kill them. American women deserve taxpayer-funded organizations whose mission doesn’t directly conflict with deeply held values of millions of Americans. What they need are organizations that stop targeting poor minority children.
As it is, Planned Parenthood, which ends around 350,000 lives every year — or around a third of all abortion in the United States — is given a massive advantage because it is propped up by government subsidies that allow it to elbow out competition which offers legitimate health services for low-income women. If you believed mainstream media reports, you might come away with the impression that there’s no other organization in the entire world that could possibly provide women’s health services. But those dollars will be diverted to organizations that perform important work. The ruling doesn’t end Medicaid.
If the ruling holds, Planned Parenthood still has options. It could redirect its profits from its thriving abortion business — or maybe from its side hustle of dismembering the unborn and selling their body parts — and continue offering “non-abortion services to thousands of low-income patients in Texas.” The media make Planned Parenthood, with its revenues of around $1.6 billion — around $616 million coming from taxpayers — sound like a charity. It is not.
Please save yourself the trouble of sending me emails explaining how Planned Parenthood is prohibited from using tax dollars for abortions. It’s an assault on common sense to pretend that dollars aren’t fungible. And please save your arguments about how most Planned Parenthood visits are for other services — it is not only irrelevant, but highly misleading. Abortion is Planned Parenthood’s cash cow, and the principal reason politicians send it hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
And, of course, Planned Parenthood could regain funding by simply ceasing to perform abortions altogether. Or break into two completely independent bodies — one that sells life and the other that sells death. It won’t. Because abortion is the point.