Miss Georgia may have won the Miss America pageant, but it’s Miss Tennessee who probably won Planned Parenthood employees’ hearts Sunday night.
That’s because Miss Tennessee, 21-year-old Hannah Robison, helped perpetuate the myth that ending federal funding for Planned Parenthood could hurt women’s access to health care.
Asked if Planned Parenthood should continue to receive federal funding, Robison gave this answer:
I don’t think Planned Parenthood funding should be cut off. The $500 million that gets given to Planned Parenthood every single year goes to female care. It goes for scanning for cancer, it goes for mammograms.
And if we don’t give that funding to Planned Parenthood, those women will be out of health care for reproductive causes.
First, as the Media Research Center’s NewsBusters noted, Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer mammograms. “Planned Parenthood spokeswoman Liz Clark confirmed … [that] the organization does not provide mammograms at any of its health centers,” reported PolitiFact Georgia in August.
Nor is this a recent development. It’s not just beauty pageant contestants who are confused about what Planned Parenthood does: President Barack Obama said in one of the 2012 presidential debates that “millions of women all across the country … rely on Planned Parenthood … for mammograms.” When FactCheck.org looked into Obama’s claim, it reported that “Planned Parenthood health centers do not offer mammography.”
Robison’s claim that “women will be out of health care for reproductive causes” if Planned Parenthood no longer receives taxpayer dollars is also untrue. In fact, as Alliance Defending Freedom has documented, there are 13,540 health care clinics that could help women. (In contrast, Planned Parenthood has 665 clinics.) If Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding is ended, that money will be redirected to health care clinics that serve women.
Thankfully, most Americans, unlike Robison, understand that there’s no need to continue funding an organization like Planned Parenthood. Seventy-eight percent of voters agree that “[g]overnment should not be in the business of funding organizations that harvest and sell baby parts from aborted children,” according to a poll commissioned by The Heritage Foundation’s American Perceptions Initiative. Furthermore, 72 percent of voters agree that “taxpayer dollars would be better spent directed to the more than 13,000 health centers and hospitals providing comprehensive women’s health care.”
We can make sure women have access to health care without using taxpayer dollars to fund an organization responsible for around one out of every three abortions in the United States. There’s no reason taxpayers dollars should go to an organization that could be behind the murder of a little girl who, in a more humane world, could have grown up to be Miss America herself.
This article has been modified, with the sentence “Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer mammograms anymore,” switched to “Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer mammograms.”
