Kansas should get Planned Parenthood's federal funding

In the Kansas state annual budget, many projects and services are funded.   Some are noble; some are awful, (Corrected w/headline 5/13) like helping Planned Parenthood stay on the federal trough.

A provision to both this year’s and last year’s state budget (on p. 1755 of this link) was added by Sen. Tim Huelskamp (R-Fowler) and Rep. Lance Kinzer (R-Olathe).  Without naming Planned Parenthood, it directly affects them as they have been getting this federal money every year.

Cutting through the formal language, the Huelskamp/Kinzer provision instructs that family planning services financed in any way under “Title X” federal rules, must be contracted primarily with public health clinics and secondarily with qualified non-public hospitals or health centers that provide comprehensive health care.

In plain language, Kansas wants to support the local health clinics that see patients of all ages and provide a wide range of services including immunizations, screenings, physicals, and referrals.  These health clinics are easily accessible, important to a community and serve the poor.

If government (our taxes) will pay for part of the salary and overhead, that will help these community clinics stay afloat.  These local clinics’ primary-care physicians are oriented foremost to overall health— not steering girls and women toward abortions, as Planned Parenthood does.

While Planned Parenthood does offer some cancer screenings and limited services for men, their main orientation is toward sex-related “problems” of reproductive-age women.  But local clinic staff can easily do STD education, pelvic exams and distribute contraceptives. (more on this in upcoming post)

Is funding an abortion business immoral, you bet! But in addition, the state ought to end any funding “partnership” with Planned Parenthood for a variety of reasons:

• It’s an unjustified favoritism of a private, very profitable, business;
• It gives Planned Parenthood the stamp of legitimacy, and medical safety;
• It leads the public to patronize this business, and to begin a long relationship with them;
• It lends silent endorsement to the eugenic agenda of aborting non-white and disabled babies;
• It’s in conflict with the duty to prosecute abortion crimes– it took 4 years to secure redacted files from the Overland Park, Kansas Planned Parenthood and 107 criminal charges have stalled for 3 more years.

Planned Parenthood would have us believe they deserve the Title X money as a “trusted health care provider.”   They are not, and are under investigation in more than a few states for medical lies and failure to report child abuse.

Call Gov. Parkinson today to urge he NOT VETO the Huelskamp/ Kinzer budget amendment.