After undercover videos released in July showed that Planned Parenthood was involved in the trafficking of aborted baby body parts, Donald Trump said he wasn’t sure if the Planned Parenthood should lose all of its federal funding. He later shifted, saying: “I wouldn’t do any funding as long as they are performing abortions.”
Trump has stuck to that line, but he has also offered a lot of aid and comfort to Planned Parenthood by arguing it does “wonderful things.” At Thursday night’s debate, Trump said that “millions and millions of women — cervical cancer, breast cancer — are helped by Planned Parenthood.” Trump did not mention the fact that community health centers could easily provide non-abortion services to those women and that Planned Parenthood has been caught falsely claiming that it performs mammograms.
Trump went on to say that he would defund Planned Parenthood “because of the abortion factor, which they say is 3 percent. I don’t know what percentage it is. They say it’s 3 percent.” If Trump took the time to Google that statistic before repeating it on national television, he would have learned that it is wildly misleading.
Planned Parenthood commits more than 300,000 abortions per year. Abortions generate more than a third of the billion-dollar non-profit’s revenue. You end up with the “three percent” figure only by treating the dispensing of birth control pills the same as the dismembering a human child.
“Practically every defender of the organization, fighting to preserve its federal funding, reverts to the 3 percent figure,” Rich Lowry wrote in August. “The 3 percent figure is an artifice and a dodge, but even taking it on its own terms, it’s not much of a defense. Only Planned Parenthood would think saying that they only kill babies 3 percent of the time is something to brag about.”
“How much credit would we give someone for saying he only drives drunk 3 percent of the time, or only cheats on business trips 3 percent of the time, or only hits his wife during 3 percent of domestic disputes?” Lowry asked.
Perhaps we don’t want to know how Donald Trump would answer those questions.
