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Newsflash, jackasses: Planned Parenthood is a health care provider

Jill

People are all in a tizzy over the fact that Planned Parenthood of Indiana is offering gift certificates for health care services. Anti-choice bloggers are predictably claiming that Planned Parenthood is offering “gift certificates for abortion,” and that the gift certificates “would be more accurately described as death certificates.”

What they neglect to mention that while Planned Parenthood of Indiana provided 5,000 abortions last year, that was out of 92,000 total patients. The gift certificates are in $25 denominations, not for particular services — so they offer women (many of whom may be uninsured) access to things like pap smears and birth control. It’s not the most romantic Christmas gift ever, but neither are the socks that my mom gets me every year. And women do have a need for health care services. There’s nothing shameful about that.

Anti-choicers and conservatives would be better off focusing on the real issues. Like the annual War on Christmas.

13 thoughts on Newsflash, jackasses: Planned Parenthood is a health care provider

  1. Oooo! Scary! I hope PP sells a lot of those. I don’t know what I would have done without Planned Parenthood before I had my health insurance.

  2. Hi,

    I agree the coverage of this is greatly exaggerated. If you look at the actual page that’s offering the gift certificates, it’s clear they’re intended for basic health care, including annual exams which cost about $58 each. http://www.ppin.org/news.aspx?NewsID=84

    I do want to point out, though, that the LA Times blog post you linked to does in fact include one of the figures you say they’ve omitted, although they claim a vastly higher number than you do. They say that “according to one published figure” PP performs 5,000 abortions per 92,000 women seen, instead of 1 per 92,000. Your figure may in fact be correct. I don’t know.

  3. Ah, I meant that anti-choice bloggers neglect to mention PP’s stats, not the LA Times. You’re right about the stat, though — I misread that. I’ll fix it in the post.

  4. A thought experiment: Lets take the argument that these gift certificates were for abortion for granted, just for a second. Say a woman got a $25.00 gift certificate from Planned Parenthood and thought to herself “oh boy, now I can get that abortion I’ve had my eye on!”

    Would $25.00 actually cover the procedure at a planned parenthood clinic? Now I’m no expert on the price of an abortion and I know PP often works on a sliding scale, but something tells me that 25 bucks isn’t going to be the deciding factor for many (any?) women.

    Being a jackass is parking in a handicapped spot without a need to or throwing garbage out your window on the interstate. The bloggers mentioned aren’t being jackasses. At best they’re painfully stupid, at worst they’re liars which, last time I check, was as mortal a sin as having an abortion (not that I buy into the idea of sin, but if you’re gonna you can’t exactly be selective).

  5. The LATimes blog is written by Andrew Malcolm, a Republican public relations agent that’s gone into MSM “blogging” but effectively is doing what he’s always been doing: Republican public relations.

    Andrew Malcolm is effectively a Republican troll and you just got punk’d because not only did you respond, you linked to his vile Republican propaganda page.

    The LATimes has been significantly corrupted (journalistically) since a right-winger from Chicago, Illinois bought the Los Angeles, California paper and immediately started to eliminate excellent journalists for a quick profit.

  6. If I had any young female friends, I would definitely be getting them a PP gift certificate for Christmas. What a better way to tell them you value their health and you believe in their ability to make sound decisions about their own bodies and their ability to procreate (or not as the case may be). I live in a college town, and for many of our young, female students, Planned Parenthood is the only place they can get affordable birth control. Needless to say, I’m a huge supporter. I just wish I had enough money to support them more.

  7. “What they neglect to mention that while Planned Parenthood of Indiana provided 5,000 abortions last year, that was out of 92,000 total patients.”

    OMG! That means PP must have killed 17.4 baybees per abortion!

  9. William: 25 bucks would barely cover a month’s worth of birth control (from a normal pharmacy). Abortions tend to be about 400-500 dollars, and considering that they are same-day surgery, inexpensive. Which is something few people on the other side acknowledge when they go on and on about how the abortion “industry” is a billion-dollar a year operation. If it is, it’s operating at a loss. When was the last time you had same day surgery uncovered by insurance for less than a thousand? Hell, my dental appointments cost nearly twice what my abortion did. But I digress.

    ————————-

    Of course, it would be fine if somebody got their wife/daughter/girlfriend/cousin/niece/friend a gift certificate for PP services and they wanted to use it on an abortion. But morely likely people will be using it for copays and checkups and medication and prevention of pregnancy, which strangely enough leads to the prevention of abortion. Don’t know why the pearl clutchers bemoaning the existence of these certificates can’t make that logical leap.

  11. Let’s say that the Wal-Mart giftcard you give to your kid will be used to buy a rifle.

    …Whats wrong with that? Other than the fact that it’d be giving money to a shitty, sexist company like Walmart, that is.

  13. Did anyone notice that Jon Stewart made fun of the Planned Parenthood gift certificate on tonight’s show? I was thoroughly disgusted and had to change the channel. He even implied that the only thing you could use it for would be an abortion by saying that you could have saved the money and bought a condom instead, or something to that effect. I’ve lost a lot of respect for the guy.

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