Senate Democratic leaders Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer held a press conference Thursday morning alongside Planned Parenthood’s executive director in an effort to justify their decision to block $1.1 billion in federal funding to combat the Zika virus.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said that many women would “have no place else to go” to get birth control if anti-Zika funding didn’t provide extra cash to Planned Parenthood.
“These women, many of them, have no place else to go,” Reid said. “And are they afraid? Do they want to see if they can get birth control so they don’t get pregnant? Where else can they go? Planned Parenthood.”
“So on that issue alone, I think it’s pretty strong,” Reid said of the decision to block the $1.1 billion bill.
The vast majority of anti-Zika funding goes toward mosquito prevention and vaccine research and development, but a small chunk goes toward public health efforts. And Planned Parenthood executive director Dawn Laguens said at the press conference that it is more important to open up that small chunk to direct funding of Planned Parenthood than it is to pass a bill now. “The Senate can take another chance, come back, and get this right,” Laguens said.
But under current law, Planned Parenthood already receives hundreds of millions of dollars in government funding, and the Zika bill wouldn’t cut that funding by one cent.
Mandatory spending authorized by federal law gives birth control to the poor through Medicaid. The federal government spends an additional $300 million per year under Title X to provide birth control to low-income and uninsured women who don’t qualify for Medicaid. Obamacare forces private insurance plans to provide birth control without a copay to all women covered by those private plans.
Through all these different mandatory-spending programs, American women may go to Planned Parenthood to receive government-funded or government-mandated birth control for free.
So Harry Reid’s claim that women will have “no place else to go” to get birth control is simply false.
Even in the context of the $1.1 billion anti-Zika bill, the Planned Parenthood talking point is deeply misleading. Politifact reports:
In other words, Planned Parenthood wasn’t explicitly excluded from additional funding. It simply fails to qualify for direct funding because it’s not a community health center, public health department, or hospital. “What’s important to note is that everywhere Profamilias lists a clinic,” Politifact reports, “has another type of facility that would have been eligible for additional funding to combat the spread of Zika.”
One thing Politifact fails to mention is that to the extent Planned Parenthood in Puerto Rico or any other eligible state or territory sees an uptick in Medicaid patients because of Zika, Planned Parenthood would effectively qualify for supplemental funding under the anti-Zika legislation if a state opts to use supplemental funds to offset Medicaid costs. And, of course, the bill does nothing to cut the hundreds of millions Planned Parenthood already gets through Medicaid and Title X for contraception.
Senate Democrats are using the flimsiest of pretexts to block this bill in order to portray Republicans as belligerents in a “war on women.”
