opinion

Political games, not abortion, drive push to defund PP

The Planned Parenthood chapter that serves Iowa doesn't provide tissues from aborted fetuses for medical research.

Whatever those videos taken by a front organization for anti-abortion groups claiming to do medical research claimed to show, remember that fact. It speaks to the absurdity of Iowa lawmakers' political shenanigans in trying to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

Also remember this: Planned Parenthood of the Heartland doesn’t use state funds to pay for abortions, or at least it hasn't in more than two years. Medicaid may pay for abortions for low-income people when the fetus is severely damaged, the mother's life is endangered or the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. But Planned Parenthood hasn’t sought such reimbursement since Gov. Terry Branstad signed legislation requiring that he personally approve all Medicaid-funded abortion requests.

RELATED: GOP vs. Planned Parenthood is a futile fight

In other words, the factors that set off the whole brouhaha in the U.S. Congress, with House Republicans willing to shut down the federal government unless it stopped giving funds to Planned Parenthood, don't apply in Iowa. But that hasn’t stopped Iowa Republicans from jumping on the bandwagon, just for good measure. A bunch of them are demanding Branstad use executive orders to cancel millions of dollars in state and federal funding to Planned Parenthood in Iowa. If he doesn’t, their leader, state Sen. David Johnson of Ocheyedan, promises a fight in next year's Legislature.

Branstad says that's not feasible. "The attorney general’s office has notified us that we don’t have reasons; they haven’t violated their responsibilities under the grants that they have received from the state,” the abortion-opponent governor told reporters. Did Branstad check on that when he was running? Bob Vander Plaats, who heads the Christian conservative Family Leader, is hammering on him for breaking a 2010 campaign pledge to end all state funding for services that Planned Parenthood provides — just because it also provide abortions. Federal officials have warned other states they can't withhold money for services Medicaid is authorized to cover.

Planned Parenthood of the Heartland has 13 clinics in Iowa, four of those in rural or medically underserved areas. In FY2014, it served 37,712 Iowa patients with STD, HIV and cervical cancer screenings, breast exams, birth control, pregnancy tests, emergency contraception, abortion and adoption information and services. Fifty-four percent of its patients are at or below poverty level. Only 12 percent of funding comes from government grants.

EDITORIAL: Branstad sides with common sense on PP controversy

Foes of Planned Parenthood say the funds could go to other clinics. “Politicians like to pit Planned Parenthood against community health centers in this conversation,” says Angie Remington, an Iowa spokeswoman for the agency. “... Community health centers are not always equipped to handle an influx of new patients. They often don't provide the range of reproductive health services we provide, and they don't have the staff resources or the facilities to start doing so within a reasonable time frame." And she said there are specific grants earmarked for reducing teen pregnancy, for example, that can't be transferred to another provider.

That proves these so-called abortion opponents aren't serious about stopping abortions. If so, they wouldn't take aim at the largest provider of pregnancy prevention services. These aren't strategies; they're games of political one-upmanship: Don't accept our agenda? We'll prevent you from implementing yours even after it's signed, with court cases, government shutdowns, whatever it takes.

Such self-defeating power plays emanate from a growing element in the party that prides itself on obstructionism rather than realism. It’s not enough to have the House majority; some are “trying to burn the House down,” as Rep. Bill Flores, a Texas Republican said in Monday’s New York Times.

Or take it from Eric Cantor, the former House majority leader, like Boehner a conservative Republican who lost the support of House GOP hardliners. In a Sept. 25 Times column, Cantor wrote that House Republicans had reason to be upset in Obama's first two years about Obamacare, the economic stimulus and financial regulations. Then Republicans won a House majority and were able to block new Obama measures from passing. But “a number of voices on the right began demanding that the Republican Congress not only block Mr. Obama’s agenda but enact a reversal of his policies. They took to the airwaves and the Internet and pronounced that congressional Republicans could undo the president’s agenda — with him still in office, mind you — and enact into law a conservative vision for government, without compromise.

"Strangely, according to these voices, the only reason that was not occurring had nothing to do with the fact that the president was unlikely to repeal his own laws, or that under the Constitution, absent the assent of the president or two-thirds of both houses of Congress, you cannot make law. The problem was a lack of will on the part of congressional Republican leaders." Now it's happening again, Cantor wrote.

And the more it happens, the more Republican voters get the idea that obstructionism and total overhaul are legitimate and achievable ways to run a government, even if that requires defaulting on debt or taking away birth control from a sexually active young woman who's trying to be responsible. Just look at their leading presidential candidate.