Union Bosslady Randi Weingarten tweeted that cutting off federal funds to Planned Parenthood would leave many women who rely on Medicaid in a lurch.
More than 50% of Planned Parenthood patients are enrolled in Medicaid. Defunding @PPFA would take their coverage away. #StandWithPP
— Randi Weingarten (@rweingarten) August 5, 2015
Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, just doesn’t get how absurd that Planned Parenthood talking point is. Defunding Planned Parenthood won’t take anyone’s Medicaid coverage away. Women who rely on Medicaid can still get care from community health centers, which outnumber Planned Parenthood locations almost 13 to one, and provide more services to women.
Mollie Hemmingway explained how these health centers actually provide more services for women than Planned Parenthood does. They provide almost half a million mammograms and administer more than 1.7 million pap screens each year. Despite another favorite talking points, that they provide breast cancer screenings, Planned Parenthood actually has no licensed mammogram facilities.
Weingarten’s tweet seems to be ripped verbatim from Planned Parenthood Action’s website, which is still supposedly under maintenance nearly a week after they faked their own cyber attack. But if you Google “half of Planned Parenthood patients are enrolled in Medicaid,” the phrase shows up in the meta description of Planned Parenthood Action site’s search result. This indicates Weingarten is just parroting Planned Parenthood’s talking points.
If it really is true that half of Planned Parenthood’s patients are enrolled in Medicaid, then it’s clear they’re targeting lower-income women. Nationally, 1 in 5 Americans are enrolled in Medicaid. This means that half of Planed Parenthood’s clientele are from these 20 percent who rely on federal funds.
NPR recently reported that 79 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clients in 2012 “lived at 150 percent of the federal poverty level or lower (that comes out to around $18,500 for a single adult).”
It looks like this organization is fulfilling the vision of its founder, Margaret Sanger, who actively sought to limit childbearing among minorities and those she deemed biologically unfit to “breed.” She was a huge fan of the Nazis’ forced sterilization program, was a guest speaker for the Ku Klux Klan, and advocated to get minorities to voluntarily stop “breeding” via contraception and abortion.
Congratulations, Planned Parenthood! Your eugenist founder would be so proud that you’ve aborted so many babies from poor mothers.
