Mediaboss Marketing

The United States Congress is trying hard to defund Planned Parenthood, once and for all. For a period of one year, the proposed American Health Care Act would prohibit federal funds from going to non-profit organizations that provide family-planning services, including abortions, and get more than $350 million in reimbursements under Medicaid, which provides health insurance to the poor, the elderly, children, pregnant women, and people with disabilities. When the Congressional Budget Office evaluated this clause of the bill, it identified only one organization that would be affected: Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates and clinics.

If this bill goes through, it would represent an existential threat for Planned Parenthood. The organization would be less able to serve poor women who are covered by state Medicaid programs, and it would likely have to close clinics or reduce its services because of the loss of funding. The main motivation behind this provisionand others like it that have come up at the state levelis opposition to abortion. This has lead some, including Ivanka Trump, to wonder why Planned Parenthood doesnt just spin off its abortion services into a separate organization.

Cecile Richards, the organizations president, will have no such thing. The minute we begin to edge back from that is the minute that theyve won, she said during an interview at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Monday. Despite the renewed push in Washington to stop the organization from getting government funding, Richards believes Planned Parenthood can win the culture wars and make abortion widely acceptable in America. Weve got to quit apologizing or hiding, she said.

Technically, the federal government already prohibits funding for most abortion services. Under the so-called Hyde Amendment, first passed in 1976, organizations like Planned Parenthood cant get reimbursed by Medicaid for performing elective abortions. But pro-life advocates often argue that Hyde doesnt go far enough. Since Planned Parenthood can get public money for some of the other services it provides, taxpayer dollars still effectively go to fund abortions, they say.

This characterization is completely inaccurate, Richards said. Other health-care organizations, including many hospitals, provide abortions, she argued, and they, too, get reimbursed under Medicaid for their other services. Somehow, Planned Parenthood is being held to a completely different standard, she said.

Richards believes the political discourse around abortion has become toxic in recent years. There was a time when the Republican Party embraced individual liberties, she said. In fact, many of our Planned Parenthood affiliates were founded by Republicans. While more Republicans used to consider themselves pro-choice, she said, their ranks have been significantly been reducedRichards name-checked Maine Senator Susan Collins and Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski as the only two left in the Senate.

Weve got to pull the curtains back and be open and honest about this procedure.

Even in the face of so much opposition, Richards isnt willing to have Planned Parenthood separate abortion from the rest of its health-care servicesquite the opposite. She believes Planned Parenthood can and will win the culture wars to end the stigma of abortion.

Its more important than ever that we stand loud and proud for the ability of any womanregardless of her income, her geography, her immigration status, her sexuality, her sexual orientationto access the full range of reproductive health care, Richards said. Weve got to pull the curtains back and be open and honest about this procedure that one in three women will have at some point in their lifetime, and their right to make that decision.

Richards cited the way pop-culture depictions of abortion have changed in recent years. Ill shout out Teen Vogue and Cosmo and Glamourwomens magazines that are putting abortion stories into their magazines. Thats never happened before, she said. Or abortion will show up on television: Shonda Rhimes, who recently joined Planned Parenthoods board, featured abortion in an episode of Scandal, dealt with not in hysterical terms, as Richards put it.

Richards repeatedly claimed that the vast majority of people in this country believe that abortion should be safe and legal, and thats even more true today than its ever been. The available polling does not necessarily back up this assertion. As of 2016, about 57 percent of American said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to Pew Research Centera level that has been roughly consistent over the past two decades, and slightly lower than what polls on this issue found in 1995.

Gallup found that half of Americans said abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances in 2016, and that 46 percent of Americans identify as pro-life. The numbers also dont differ radically by generation: According to Pew, between 37 and 42 percent of all age groups said abortion should be illegal in all or most cases in 2016.

Ill fight until the end of my days for every woman to make that decision themselves.

Richards sees the recent legislative efforts to end funding for abortion as the first battle in a long war. A cautionary tale: These folks arent just against Planned Parenthood, she said. Theyre against birth-control access. ... Anyone who thinks that if we didnt provide abortion services, somehow, they would quit this attack on womenIm sorry. Its just the beginning.

Her answer is to commit to abortion: to stop hiding, de-stigmatize it, and most of all, keep performing the procedure. Having been pregnant myself, my children are the joy of my life, she said. But that was my decision to make. And Ill fight until the end of my days for every woman to make that decision themselves.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the people most likely to be affected by the AHCAs one-year ban on reimbursement for family-planning services have low incomes and live in areas without a lot of health-care options. About 15 percent of this population would lose access to reproductive-health care, the CBO projected. Despite Richardss confidence, a clear majority of the House has voted to defund Planned Parenthood. If the Senate follows its lead, the organization will struggle to survive.

Read more here:
Planned Parenthood Still Believes It Can Win the Culture Wars - The Atlantic