Ross Douthat is at it again - calling to defund Planned Parenthood, the health care provider that offers millions of Americans access to care critical for preventing unintended pregnancy and caring for ones' health.

Is there anything, at this point, that can explain Ross Douthat’s hubris in attacking a health care provider that offers care to millions of low-income Americans, as health care becomes more a privilege than a right for all Americans?

His latest column reveals he enjoys making baseless claims to support

his belief system. Douthat, like many anti-choice movement

members, wants to strip women (and men) of a certain income level of this country of reproductive

and sexual health care because he doesn’t like that some

providers offer comprehensive, legal medical procedures with which he doesn’t agree. Douthat is opposed to legal abortion, so he

painstakingly plays off of a Family Research Council fabricated controversy over Planned Parenthood – the provider nationwide that happens to

represent one of the few options remaining for women (and men!) of a

certain income level who need (no, not want) critical health care

like contraception, family planning, sexually transmitted infection

testing and treatment, HIV testing, annual exams, Pap smears, and

more.

Even William Saletan acknowledged what Douthat’s "campaign" is really about – abortion. Saletan goes so far as to call Planned Parenthood the most "effective pro-life organization in the history of the world."

Sex. Abortion. Parenthood. Power. The latest news, delivered straight to your inbox. SUBSCRIBE

But the Family Research Council (FRC) isn’t buying it. They claim, via an email today, that Planned Parenthood is "awash" in funds and that if Planned Parenthood truly wanted to decrease the number of abortions, rather than providing birth control, contraception and family planning (you know, those things proven to actually prevent pregnancy and STIs), they should just "stop providing them." Because, you know, if Planned Parenthood stopped providing abortions, unintended pregnancy would magically disappear.

Douthat’s post is truly

as painful to read (in its lack of common sense and evidence-based reasoning) as the FRC email. As we engage in a nationwide discussion on the

absolutely horrifying state of our health care system – one in which millions

of Americans are forced to go without care, including

reproductive and sexual health care, in part because health care providers can no longer afford to treat those who

require Medicaid subsidies or to provide care on a sliding scale

basis, Douthat and the FRC want to refocus Americans’ attention on

dismantling an organization that does provide such care. Planned Parenthood steps in, with the aid of tax dollars (and where

else would Douthat like to see “his” tax dollars go in order

to ensure health care for the millions of Americans who need STI

prevention services, HIV testing, contraception, family planning,

annual exams, Pap smears and more?) in order to provide these

services. Yes, they also provide abortions. And, yes, Douthat and

others do not like abortion. But, here’s the thing:

Planned Parenthood

must (by federal law) keep their abortion services separate from

their other services. The funding they receive to ensure that

millions of Americans are given access to critical reproductive and

sexual health care services must be funneled to those services.

Federal law dictates that taxpayer money cannot pay for abortions.

If Douthat has evidence that the organization is behaving in a

fraudulent manner in this regard, then there’s a story here.

If not, Douthat is simply registering his frustration with the fact

that a legal medical procedure for women can be provided by an

organization that also receives federal funds to provide other

health care. I’m afraid Douthat has a big battle in front of

him. What about those folks who believe contraception is murder?

Should we bar health care providers who offer contraception to

patients from receiving federal or state money too? What about

independent physicians in private practice who perform abortions and

also accept Medicaid subsidy for low income clients for other

services (though, as I mentioned above, they are fewer and farther

between these days)?

While

Douthat tries to turn that 3% of Planned Parenthood costs spent on

abortion care into a 250,000 number-of-abortions outrage he’s still

left with the original (true) fact – 3% of Planned Parenthood’s

services are abortion services. Which means that 97% of services

Planned Parenthood provides are reproductive and sexual health care

services which are not abortion. Douthat comes awfully close to admitting that the anti-choice

movement is anti-contraception as well. He complains

that 250,000 abortions/year are too many, but what is his

answer? Defund Planned Parenthood, the organization that ensures

that millions of young women and men are given the preventive tools,

care and information to avoid unintended pregnancy.

As

a former women’s health center employee and part of the

reproductive health movement that prioritizes prevention, education

and trust, this next part of Douthat’s “argument”

makes my head spin. Douthat tries to “prove” that Planned

Parenthood is somehow fudging the numbers by using an article

Charlotte Allen wrote:

Just three percent,

hmm? Why, that makes it sound like Planned Parenthood almost never

performs abortions. Of course, the reality is rather different, as

Charlotte Allen noted last year: The 3 percent

pie slice in the 2005-06 financial report, representing 264,943

abortion customers served, can only be described as deliberately

misleading.

So, here we go again.

First of all, as any current or former nonprofit employee of a service

organization understands, in an annual report, you categorize

services in terms of percentages. If Planned Parenthood’s

abortion services make up 3% of their services, then categorizing this fact isn’t “sneaky” – it’s true.

But more than that, the way Douthat uses Allen’s reasoning to “prove” how Planned Parenthood tweaks

this number is stunning in its ability to demonstrate how little

anti-choicers understand about women’s health care provision

and how badly they want to politicize women’s health care at

any cost.

One way Planned

Parenthood massages the numbers to make its abortion business look

trivial is to unbundle its services for purposes of counting. Those

10.1 million different medical procedures in the last fiscal year,

for instance, were administered to only 3 million clients. An

abortion is invariably preceded by a pregnancy test–a separate

service in Planned Parenthood’s reckoning–and is almost always

followed at the organization’s clinics by a "going home"

packet of contraceptives, which counts as another separate service.

Throw in a pelvic exam and a lab test for STDs–you get the picture.

In terms of absolute numbers of clients, one in three visited Planned

Parenthood for a pregnancy test, and of those, a little under one in

three had a Planned Parenthood abortion.

Okay, so, for the sake

of anti-choice advocates who want to see abortion criminalized, I’ll

address Allen’s points but I am hopeful that Rewire

will present an actual health care provider’s perspective to

crush this nonsense.

Planned Parenthood

isn’t “massaging” numbers by separating out

numbers of reproductive and sexual health care services

provided to women either before or after an abortion. When a woman

comes to a health care provider with an unintended pregnancy and

wishes to discuss her (legal!) options, she is first asked to take a

pregnancy test. This is, of course, a separate service from an

abortion procedure. The medical provider needs to know for sure that

this woman is pregnant first. Then they can discuss options:

continuing the pregnancy and parenting the child, continuing the

pregnancy and working with adoption services, or having an abortion,

thus terminating the pregnancy. That’s what health providers do

– should they instead, in Allen and Douthat’s world –

ask women to come in with a used pregnancy test? Secondly, Planned

Parenthood does not provide prenatal or childbirth services. Women

who visit Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test are more than

likely already thinking about abortion as an option.

Secondly, Allen’s

condescending description of a "going home"

packet of contraceptives’ post-abortion reveals her true

feelings about contraception. While I can only suppose that the

medical offices of Allen and Douthat would send women away

post-abortion without the tools to actually prevent unintended

pregnancy again, most health care providers in this country (and all

mainstream medical associations) understand that ensuring women’s

access to contraception and family planning is critical to a healthy

life. It is unquestionable at this point that access to

contraception, globally, improves women’s health and lives,

elevates their status in society and is only beneficial

for the health of a nation. As Guttmacher puts it (PDF),

In addition to

improved health, sexual and reproductive health services contribute

to economic growth, societal and gender equity, and democratic

governance.

But Douthat uses Allen’s quote as a “gotcha” for Planned

Parenthood. Again, providing women with the means, post abortion, to

prevent unintended pregnancy does not catch Planned Parenthood in

some elaborate scheme – it catches them at doing exactly what

they should be doing, and what we should all be grateful they are

doing: providing women and families with the means to prevent

unintended pregnancy and STIs.

Ultimately Douthat’s

entire article will resonate only with the fiercest of anti-choice

advocates. As has been made clear this election season, and through

more polling than one can count, Americans support ensuring access to

health care for women – even (!) reproductive and sexual health care.

In addition, they oppose piling on even more legal restrictions

based on narrow, fundamentalist religious perspectives. Instead,

Americans are desperate to invest more time, energy and resources

into those programs – both advocacy and service –that

focus on prevention and education. It’s that darn common ground

concept that Douthat doesn’t like. Unfortunately for women,

though it’s most certainly the fuel for our fight, finding

“common ground” in the reproductive health movement is

about much more than “gotchas” and hot-button

ideological accusations. It’s about our health and lives.