It took three videos showing Planned Parenthood doctors and executives discussing the culling and retailing of aborted baby parts, but Hillary Clinton finally managed to say that she found the videos “disturbing.”
For a professional politician like Clinton, whose every word is vetted by the vast right lobe of her brain, “disturbing” in the vernacular of less-scripted folk would be something like “horrifying” or “vile.”
But Clinton, whose base includes supporters of Planned Parenthood , as well as the mega-fundraising, pro-choice Emily’s List, tiptoed out on a limb. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it brave, but I also wouldn’t underestimate its significance. Even a passionately pro-choice presidential candidate has to pause at this juncture.
A tipping point may have already been reached, however, as people recoil from that which cannot be denied. Where once many could avert our eyes from the details of abortion, the details are now all we see and, thanks to the videos, hear.[…]
Planned Parenthood offers only a manual breast exam that any woman can do herself — and performs no mammograms. Rather, it refers women to other clinics. Thus, the ads are at least exaggerated if not purposely deceptive.
Also deceptive is the claim that defunding Planned Parenthood would strip women of health care. In fact, a Senate bill to defund Planned Parenthood, co-authored by Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), stipulates that all of its public funding be reallocated to federally qualified community health centers, which provide all women’s health-care services except abortion, without regard to a person’s ability to pay.
In other words, Planned Parenthood would still be able to provide abortions, since no federal funding can legally be used for abortion, anyway. And abortion opponents would no longer have to worry that their tax money was going to an abortion provider, even though the funds can’t legally be used for abortion.