On the Taxpayers’ Dime

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And then there’s this. I believe future generations will look back on the defense—and celebration—of the indiscriminate killing of babies the way we look back on slavery (well done, Democrats, 2 for 2):

More. “Planned Parenthood receives more than $500 million dollars in taxpayer funding every year. … They also receive many taxpayer dollars through the Title X family planning program. There is zero meaningful separation of staff, facilities, and operational costs at Planned Parenthood clinics between government-funded services and abortions.”

Washington Post from August 2017, “Planned Parenthood’s Virginia affiliate plans to spend $3 million to help elect Democrat Ralph Northam as the state’s next governor.”

15 Comments for “On the Taxpayers’ Dime”

  1. posted by Jorge on

    The federal government doesn’t pay Planned Parenthood for infanticide, it pays PP for spermicide.

    What?

    Similarly, the federal government doesn’t pay Miracle Hill for the defense of marriage, it pays MH for serving chicken soup.

    *record scratch*

    What’s that, the feds do pay Miracle Hill for the sanctity of marriage?

    That being said, now that I think of it, I’m convinced the other way. I forgot the reason in the middle of writing this.

  2. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    The federal government does not pay Planned Parenthood or anyone else to provide abortions. Not one cent.

    The government reimburses Planned Parenthood for specific medical procedures and preventive care under Title X, Medicaid and Medicare, just as it funds other providers of those services. Federal law prohibits abortion funding under those laws. To imply that abortion is funded by federal funds (“On the Taxpayers’ Dime”) is deception.

    • posted by Josh123 on

      Oh, give me a break. Government funding is fungible and never more so than in the case of PP.
      “Planned Parenthood receives more than $500 million dollars in taxpayer funding every year. … They also receive many taxpayer dollars through the Title X family planning program. There is zero meaningful separation of staff, facilities, and operational costs at Planned Parenthood clinics between government-funded services and abortions.” https://rtl.org/RLMNews/09editions/AreMyTaxDollarsPayingForAbortion.htm

      • posted by Jorge on

        There is zero meaningful separation of staff, facilities, and operational costs at Planned Parenthood clinics between government-funded services and abortions.

        Why should there be?

        We, the taxpayers, are paying PP to provide a service at less than cost, and they have provided that service. We are paying them after the fact. If we were end our contract with them tomorrow, we’re not getting that money back. It’s assets. The money is theirs to do whatever they want with it.

        If I hire Mario and Luigi to do plumbing, and they plumber my house, and I paid them, and I claim FRAUD because they took the money and spent it on new boots, that I know they’re going to use to jump on, stomp, and crush turtles, and there’s a lucrative business out there for crush videos of animal cruelty, I am wrong. That is not deception or fraudulentness. They did their job. They can use their money. It’s their money.

        Now, I may not like the fact that the Mario Brothers make money off of killing turtles. I might even decide not to continue my business with them anymore. That’s my right. But it would be wrong to accuse them of deceptive business practices just because I believe turtles are innocent lives that must be protected–especially out of a motivation to get one up over those who quite reasonably if misguidedly believe that the turtles’ threats to life and social order justify killing them.

        So mind your own business over how Planned Parenthood spends tomorrow what they earn today, unless you want to take a stand once and for all that abortion is wrong and shall not be tolerated. I am not willing to take a once and for all stand that I cannot win. They earn today for what we contracted with them to do. That is enough.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Government funding is fungible and never more so than in the case of PP.

      Government funding is fungible only in the sense that once a government payment is received it goes into the provider’s account and is used to pay expenses, without segregation as to the source of funds. Government payments, however, are not fungible — payments are made for services provided and billed. Planned Parenthood does not bill the government for providing abortion services, nor does the government pay Planned Parenthood for providing abortion services.

      You seem to be suggesting that all payments to Planned Parenthood indirectly fund abortions. That’s a common conservative objection that comes around every time that Republicans go on a terror about “defunding Planned Parenthood”, and in a sense it is true, in the same sense that payments to a “faith-based” organization providing child care in a church indirectly funds the Christian religion by contributing to the heat and light bills for the church building.

      But do you really want to require government services providers to segregate funds after payment to achieve that end? It seems to me that the cure is worse than the disease.

  3. posted by JohnInCA on

    […] whose business of crushing babies in the womb up to the point of live delivery […]

    Only happens in the defense of the mother’s life.

    So either (A) You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, or (B) you’d literally rather a woman die (probably taking the baby with her) then get an abortion.

    Neither is a good look.

    • posted by Jorge on

      Only happens in the defense of the mother’s life.

      New York just passed a law that allows it in the defense of a mother’s “health.”.

      This means, in my humble opinion, we are now likely to have situations like the following:

      Suppose there is a woman with a severe mental illness who functions very poorly without medication, who then becomes pregnant, and let us suppose she… wasn’t taking her medication anyway.

      She becomes psychiatrically hospitalized and cannot be medicated because it’s a risk to the baby. The child is too far along to be terminated. In the old days they’d keep her in the hospital until she gave birth, and then they’d remove the child until she got on her medication and was well enough to take care of the child.

      Under the current law the woman would have the option of terminating the pregnancy because being pregnant places the woman’s health at risk. It is illegal for her to take her psych meds and function in a healthy manner. She does not want to stay in the hospital, and she certainly doesn’t to give birth just to have child protective services remove the child. She wants to terminate her pregnancy and be well, and get out of the hospital.

      The new law in New York allows that. And it is unconscionable.

      • posted by JohnInCA on

        “Likely”? Quantify that, please. How likely do you think “likely” is. Per capita, per live births, or raw totals are all acceptable.

        I mean, I won’t really have any way to contest your prediction other then “that doesn’t sound likely to me”, but if nothing else you can check back in a few years and see if your prediction resembled reality.

        • posted by Jorge on

          “Likely”? Quantify that, please. How likely do you think “likely” is.

          Certain and inevitable.

          Per capita, per live births, or raw totals are all acceptable.

          Hmm

          Within five years, 5% (I really don’t know) of pregnancies by chronically seriously mentally ill women between the ages of 18 and 35, per year.

          Which I would guess is a population of 9500 women times whatever percent is the pregnancy for that age per year (which I do not know). I would guess that estimate is up to tenfold too high.

          So the maximum number of late term abortions that could occur in five years is somewhere between 950 and 9500 per year as a result of this law.

          • posted by JohnInCA on

            Hrm…

            New York State has a population of about 20 million. New York City has a population of about 9 million (rounding up for both).

            New York City had 121,673 live births in 2015, so if we extrapolate the numbers real quick, we can guess roughly 270,000 live births in the state.

            Over 5 years, that would be 1,350,000 births.

            Your estimate is that we would get 950 to 9500 fewer births due to “crazy woman aborting in the third trimester”, so that gives us 0.07% – 0.7% aborted babies that would otherwise have been live births.

            Let’s look at New Jersey, which already doesn’t have a gestational age-limit for abortion. ~750 per year, for half the population of New York state. About half are estimated to due to viaibility.

            So if we assume New Yorkers are a lot like New Jersians, we could expect ~750 late-term abortions for a reason other then viability per year. Multiple by five, ad we get 3750 over five years.

            Now, that New Jersey number includes health reasons, and the sane and crazy alike. So that your range (limited to just crazy women, just for mental health reasons) is close to it makes me think your range is probably high.

            So as predicted, I look at your numbers and think “yeah, that doesn’t seem likely.”

            Still. Hold onto them. In five years check back.

  4. posted by JohnInCA on

    And on my second-pass, I notice that like a lot of other conservative commentators, Miller is trying to frame this about denying services to gay people.

    Because the actual case, denying services to Jewish people, is a lot harder to sell, I guess.

    But the facts remain the facts. Miracle Hill was sued because it denied a Jewish couple. So if you can’t find it in your heart to defend an explicitly antisemitic organization receiving federal funds, you probably shouldn’t be cheering this on.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      But the facts remain the facts. Miracle Hill was sued because it denied a Jewish couple. So if you can’t find it in your heart to defend an explicitly antisemitic organization …

      It is much worse than that, actually.

      Miracle Hill by its own statements serves “Protestant Christian foster parents”, discriminating against Catholics and Mormons as well as non-Christian religionists and non-religionists, and expects foster parents to “partner” with them in their “our mission is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ”.

      As to DSS guidelines requiring foster parents to respect the faith of foster children, Miracle Hill does a slide-around: “It’s really important to note as well that we serve all children. It does not matter whether they have Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish [backgrounds],” Ms. Furnell said. “If DSS wants to place one of those children with our families, they can do so. It’s entirely up to DSS as to where those children go.”

      Miracle Hill loves the little children, and wants them to know how much Jesus loves them, too. All the while getting paid by the government for proselytizing.

      Years ago, back when government support for “faith-based” organizations was proposed, the Christian proponents swore on a stack of Authorized Version Bibles that they would never cross the line from providing services to proselytizing. Opponents argued that it was inevitable that many would do just that. And then they started getting caught at it, one by one, little by slowly.

      Conservatives didn’t like the fact that “faith-based” organizations were being caught, so here we are — conservatives outright funding conservative Christian organizations like Miracle Hill in their efforts to proselytize.

      • posted by JohnInCA on

        Well, yes.

        But my point isn’t that Miracle Hill is vocally intent on discriminating against all sorts of people (though they are), it’s that the people keen on writing on it are intentionally ignoring the reality of what happened so they can play up the “gay v. religion” card.

        Simply put, Miracle Hill is playing dirty pool, and so are writers like Miller.

        • posted by Tom Scharbach on

          Don’t get me wrong. I agree with you. The conservatives writing about Miracle Hill are playing fast, loose and deceptive, “dirty pool” as you put it by characterizing this as a “gay versus religion” question. That’s nothing new. I was just pointing out how Miracle Hill’s intention goes beyond discrimination into using government funds to support Christian proselytizing, and overtly at that. Having that out in the open is a new twist.

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    If anyone still has any doubt about the fact that the Supreme Court will cooperate with conservative Christian efforts to further establishment of the Christian religion, that doubt should have been removed by the Court’s order issued this week in Dunn v. Ray.

    Ray is a death row inmate, and there is no doubt that the state of Alabama may execute him. The only issue in this case was whether Ray, who is Muslim, may be killed with his Imam at his side. Under state law and the prison’s policies, “a Christian prisoner may have a minister of his own faith accompany him into the execution chamber to say his last rites”, but that is not the case if a prisoner is non-Christian.

    As Justice Kagan noted in her dissent:

    “The clearest command of the Establishment Clause,” this Court has held, “is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.” Larson v. Valente, 456 U. S. 228, 244 (1982). But the State’s policy does just that. Under that policy, a Christian prisoner may have a minister of his own faith accompany him intothe execution chamber to say his last rites. But if an inmate practices a different religion — whether Islam, Judaism, or any other — he may not die with a minister of his own faith by his side. That treatment goes against the Establishment Clause’s core principle of denominational neutrality. See, e.g., Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 104 (1968) (“[Government] may not … aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another”); Zorach v. Clauson, 343 U. S. 306, 314 (1952) (“The government must be neutral when it comes to competition between sects”).

    I should note that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority (Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, Thomas) couches its decision as simply a matter of procedure. Ray’s execution was set for Thursday on November 6th. According to the majority, “Ray waited until January 28, 2019 to seek relief,” and thus his request may be denied under the principle that “a court may consider the last-minute nature of an application to stay execution in deciding whether to grant equitable relief.”

    Uh, huh. The decision would have been different if the prisoner had been a conservative Christian. You can count on it.

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