Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards urges Cosmopolitan readers on this day before the presidential election to recognize “the presidential nominee of the Republican party has been exposed by his own words as a sexual predator.”
“I don’t know a single parent in the world who wants their sons to treat women the way Donald Trump does,” Richards writes in a column at the online magazine geared to young women. She neglects, however, to mention any of the accusations of sexual predation and cover-up aimed at Hillary Clinton and her husband.
Not to mention the allegations of sexual exploitation lodged against Planned Parenthood itself. Writing at National Review, Lila Rose, president of pro-life organization Live Action, observes:
For nearly ten years, our team at Live Action has investigated Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. During our investigations, we exposed Planned Parenthood facilitating the sexual exploitation of minors and covering up human trafficking. We’ve watched as Planned Parenthood deceptively counseled women with false medical information to convince them to have abortions to boost its bottom line. We’ve seen Planned Parenthood promote child sexual abuse, dangerous sex advice to children, and gendercide.
Richards, however, stands to lose federal funding for her business and restrictions on the primary service she offers, should Trump be elected. The president of the abortion industry giant writes about Trump:
He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act. If this happens, those under 26 will no longer be guaranteed coverage under their parents’ plans. Insurance companies will no longer be required to cover birth control with no copay, which costs one person up to $600 per year just on birth control pills. Preventive care — like cancer screenings and annual exams — will no longer be guaranteed without out-of-pocket costs. And over 20 millions Americans could lose their health care altogether.
At the same time, he is attacking providers who support communities by providing low-cost care. Both Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, have vowed to defund Planned Parenthood. What this really means is that millions of women who rely on critical federal health programs will lose access to breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, well-woman exams, and other preventive care at Planned Parenthood health centers. For many, these health centers are the only health-care provider they will see all year.
According to Planned Parenthood’s own 2014-2015 annual report, however, while taxpayer funding of the abortion business was increased last year, the group’s total number of services dropped by 11 percent. The “cancer screenings” and other preventive services have fallen by 27 percent in just one year, and by 57 percent since 2010. Similarly, Planned Parenthood’s contraceptive services dropped by almost 18 percent in just one year.
As for 20 million Americans who “could lose their health care altogether,” it’s become obvious to most Americans many of these “newly insured” largely have health insurance cards, but little, if any, access to real health care. This has been accomplished by the fact that major health insurers have either left Obamacare or have managed their costs by severely restricting health “choices” to customers. For someone who seems to value the word “choice,” Richards is quick to disregard it when it comes to saving her abortion chain’s federal funding.
Richards and her comrades in the abortion industry want low-income American women to believe they won’t be able to obtain birth control, “cancer screenings,” and other “preventive services” if Planned Parenthood is defunded. The fact is there are 13,000 Federally Qualified Health Centers that provide more comprehensive medical services without performing abortions – a figure that outnumbers Planned Parenthood facilities by 20 to 1.
Planned Parenthood’s CEO, however, says Hillary Clinton’s fight to expand abortion services is what most women want, and the proof is that in the last presidential debate, “according to a CNN focus group…the most favored moment of the entire debate” was Clinton’s “embrace” of “reproductive rights.”
“For the generation coming of age now, there’s a lot at stake in this election,” Richards writes. “Put simply, it’s a choice about what kind of country we want to be, what kind of future we want for this generation and the next one. Do we want a president who has worked her entire career to expand opportunities for women and families, who has made the health and well-being of children her priority?”
Clinton, however, is clearly not concerned about the “health and well-being” of unborn children. She has said unborn persons have no constitutional rights, that she would work to repeal the longstanding Hyde Amendment, forcing Americans to pay for more abortions for black and Hispanic women through the Medicaid program. Clinton also vows to appoint pro-abortion Supreme Court justices.
Nevertheless, a recent Marist College Institute for Public Opinion poll found a full 81 percent of Americans favor some restrictions on abortion — including limiting the procedure after the first three months — and a continued ban on public funding of abortion.
In the survey of 1,700 Americans, even 66 percent of respondents who identify themselves as pro-choice say, “Abortion should be allowed, at most, in the first trimester, in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother, or never permitted.”