OVERCOMING THE LINE IN THE SAND

The budget debate high drama last week was a real eye opener.  The resulting compromise - a smashing success all the way around when one considers how it seems absolutely no one is happy with it - not only temporarily postponed a potential economic disaster, it also drew a line in the sand.  The democrats made it perfectly clear that they are willing to send the country over the fiscal cliff in order to protect and fund Planned Parenthood.  The republicans managed to get a small concession in the banning of abortion funding for the Washington D.C. area only - something Reid et al bemoaned, even though they have enforced the ban in the past - without republican pressure.

Planned Parenthood claims no federal dollars are spent on abortions.  In that they don't send a bill to Washington for each abortion, okay, yes, the money isn't going straight to abortions; but in that they use the money they receive from taxpayers to pay doctor's and nurse's salaries and the electric bill that powers the suction machine, it certainly is.  Consider, for a moment, smoking in restaurants.  At first, regulations required a seperate seating area for smokers.  Eventually is became evident that even though the smokers were being quarantined, their smoke was not.  In fact, it was permeating every inch, as smoke is wont to do.  And so smoking in restaurants was banned entirely.   The federal funding of Planned Parenthood is like the smoke - it may not be directly used for abortions, but it is ending up that way in the long run by permeating every inch of the organization's day to day expenses.  Let's not forget that federal funding of abortions is barred, according to the Hyde Amendment.  No matter how "compassionate" it might be (it certainly isn't for the baby in question),  banned is banned, period.  Not one thin dime of taxpayer money should go to any enterprise that performs non-emergency abortions on demand.

The fact is, Planned Parenthood is a private enterprise.  It makes a profit each year, and may even be expanding in the near future.  As such, our federal government has no business subsidizing them for anything, let alone abortions. Perhaps PP should consider tapping their celebrity friends to assist them in a fundraising drive every year.  Hopefully some of them will donate not just their fame to the cause but actually put their money where their mouths are for a change.  In fact, online donations to PP since the budget battle have increased a whopping 500%.  See?  They don't need federal funding - just whip up some hysteria and voila! it's payday! 

Unfortunately, the furor with which this issue has been met by the left is, as usual these days, over the top to the point of cartoonish.  Republicans are coming to "kill women" according to Rep. Louise Slaughter.  The GOP is out to keep women from health care services, apparently out of nothing more than sheer spite and ideology.  You would think there were no other clinics or health care facilities in the US other than PP, wouldn't you?  It's almost as if, were PP to shut down tomorrow, there would no longer be any abortions available anywhere and Roe v. Wade would somehow, in a miraculously simultanious event, be reversed.

The hysteria has to stop.  The fact that we are giving more than $350 million a year to a private - and profitable - entity is reason enough to end the gravy train.  That it might, even indirectly, pay for abortions with taxpayer funds makes defunding even more imperative.  $350 million a year won't make a big dent in our debt, but when you add it in with other cuts and, most importantly, entitlement reform, it makes a tidy sum.  Much like environmentalists are always urging us to "do your part", no matter how small,  a whole bunch of littles add up to a lot.

The issue isn't access to abortions or women's health care - there are plenty of outlets for both with or without Planned Parenthood.  The issue is money.  Simply put, we don't have any.  And yet democrats keep insisting we continue to fund PP, a private organization, even when it means forty cents of every dollar we give them is borrowed.  It's time Planned Parenthood (and other crony corporations) was weaned from the public teat.

Defunding Planned Parenthood may not happen this year, but there's always 2012 and the potential of not just a Senate flip, but the White House, too.  Good things come to those who wait.

OVERCOMING THE LINE IN THE SAND