Anti-choicers insist that abortion providers like Planned Parenthood get into the business because it's profitable. Never mind that Planned Parenthood does more to reduce the abortion rate by providing education and contraception than anything anti-choicers do.

The process of mainstreaming

insane right wing ideas has been well documented. Start with

an idea generated by fringe crazies in their fringe crazy spaces.

It gets picked up by other conservative media sources that become increasingly

more respectable, places that use good grammar and multi-syllabic words

and have editorial staff that get invited to the right cocktail parties. Soon the bogus idea gets on Fox TV and the Wall Street Journal, and then it’s

picked up on MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times and becomes part of

the mainstream wisdom. This is how racist code words like "states’

rights" and "law and order" become part of the mainstream dialogue,

and how the myth of the liberal media was invented. Anti-choice

ideas move into the mainstream like this all the time. Think about

abstinence-only education. It’s an idea cooked up by half-witted religious

fanatics who would ultimately like to ban contraception, but through this process of refining

and mainstreaming the idea, they turned it into a cash cow worth billions.

One idea generated by the right

wing fringe that hasn’t found traction in the mainstream is the claim that at there’s

such thing as an "abortion industry." This belief is one of the more laughable fantasies the organized anti-choice movement has — that abortion providers, especially non-profits like Planned

Parenthood, get into the business because it’s

uniquely profitable. Never mind that abortions are one of the

cheaper outpatient surgeries out there, in no small part because most

doctors who provide them are ideologically committed to women’s rights

and try to keep the prices reasonable. Never mind that most abortion

providers struggle to keep their patients from coming back for another

abortion by providing counseling on contraception. Never mind

that Planned Parenthood does more to reduce the abortion rate by providing

education and contraception than anything anti-choicers do. Never mind that Planned Parenthood

is a non-profit. Never mind that there’s a lot more money

in delivering babies than providing abortions. Never mind that

there are other fields of medicine to go into that not only pay better

but come without the strings attached of stigma and abuse from anti-choice

protesters.

They believe that abortion providers are captains of a profitable industry because they have

to believe it. Without that myth, anti-choicers would have to

face up to the fact that they are interfering with the medical care

of ordinary people, torturing medical professionals who dedicate their lives to

helping others, and adding pain and misery to the lives of people

who already have enough of their plates. In other words, they’d

have to face up to the fact that they’re objectively nasty people. So they make up stories about their victims to justify their behavior.

Still, the fantasy of the "abortion

industry" has long been a quaint rationalization used by only the ugliest misogynists,

and not something to worry about on a policy level. Until

recently, when the Wall Street Journal ran a story about Planned Parenthood rebranding itself as a provider of services and goods to middle class communities. To reasonable people, the story

is classic liberal do-gooderism. According to Medical News Today: Sex. Abortion. Parenthood. Power. The latest news, delivered straight to your inbox. SUBSCRIBE Officials from a Massachusetts

affiliate said they will use profits from an express center in a "trendy

retail plaza catering to college students" to help to open a similar

clinic in a low-income, largely Latino community, the Journal reports….. According to the Journal,

the strategy is increasing revenue for some clinics, which make a profit

of about $22 on each pack of birth control pills sold to clients who

can afford to pay the full price. The profit is used to subsidize other

activities, such as providing health care for low-income people or sex

education for teenagers, in addition to political activities.

The strategy is not about making money for its own sake, but about increasing the revenue

pouring into lower income communities. In addition, women in middle class communities are often unable to pay

full price for their reproductive health care, and could use the structured

pricing offered by Planned Parenthood. Middle class people, especially

women, often go through periods of being broke where a discount on reproductive

health services could make a world of difference for getting them back

on their feet. Anyone else remember Ramen noodles in your college

years?

But of course, the agents who

take crazy right wing ideas, put some lipstick on those pigs and present

them to the public saw this as an opportunity to popularize the idea

that Planned Parenthood has too much money. Kathryn Jean Lopez

of the National Review argued that Planned Parenthood has a "surplus"

and should be punished for it by being cut off from federal funds. She’s being dishonest, of

course, because that’s mandatory in anti-choice rants, no matter how

grammatically sound and laden with reasonable-sounding vocabulary.

There’s no such thing as a "surplus" if there’s still people

to educate and low income communities to tend to, which there are.

In fact, the reason for the rebranding is precisely to guard against

financial losses, to redirect money from middle class communities into

services for the underprivileged. Moreover, she’s buying into

the larger lie about Planned Parenthood being "pro-abortion," when

they do more than any other organization in the country to prevent abortion,

using methods that are effective.

But still, it’s frightening.

This is how crazy right wing ideas get mainstreamed. Lopez is

taking a self-evidently stupid belief (that Planned Parenthood, a non-profit,

is part of a capitalist cabal to strike it rich with fetal tissue) and

finessed it into what’s still a turd, but a shiny one that could

convince a few people to pass it off as gold. Claiming that Planned

Parenthood has too much money is a way of claiming that low income women

should be cut off from their reproductive care, but it doesn’t suggest that at first blush.

We’re already seeing more

conservative states redirecting funds that used to pay for services

to lower income women go to crisis pregnancy centers that specialize

in wasting your time and refusing to give you any real services.

If this lie got more hearings, it could do real damage.