Planned Parenthood Does Not Endorse Infanticide and We Can't Believe That Even Needs to Be Clarified

Is Planned Parenthood the nation's leading sexual and reproductive health care provider OR a gang of savages stampeding through the country with baby heads on spikes? This week, anti-abortion advocates are eager to convince us of the latter by claiming that the Florida Association of Planned Parenthood Affiliates supports infanticide. Talk about a straw fetus argument! (It's like a straw man argument, but even less viable. HEYO.)

Last week, the Florida House of Representatives held a hearing on HB 1129, also known as the "Infants Born Alive" bill, which would provide legal protection for infants who "survive" an abortion procedure. Given that Florida doesn't allow abortions to be performed after 24 weeks, which is when most doctors define the age of viability, the proposed act is based on a ridiculous hypothetical — and one that's extremely hurtful to the pro-choice cause, since it perpetuates the concept that abortion providers are butcher-like murderers instead of medical practitioners. We don't need it.

But when Rep. Jim Boyd asked Alisa LaPolt Snow, a lobbyist for the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, what Planned Parenthood would "want to have happen to [a] child that is struggling for life" after being born alive in a "botched abortion" situation, she was caught in a catch-22 where she was basically forced to choose between effectively "admitting" that abortion is dangerous for babies or driving home the point that it should always be up to a woman to choose what's best for her. She went with the latter:





Conservative outlets subsequently shit all over themselves in excitement scrambling to write op-eds about how Planned Parenthood wants to kill babies for sport. Choice example from The Christian Post: "If a child can be killed in the womb, there are no convincing arguments, either logical or a moral, as to why a child cannot be killed on the table, abandoned in the trash, burned alive in an incinerator or poisoned in the nursery." Logic!

Planned Parenthood released a clarifying statement this week:


The type of "botched abortions" anti-abortion advocates casually refer to as if they happen on the regular are extremely few and far between — and they usually only happen when women don't have access to the exact sort of reproductive health services Planned Parenthood offers. But why talk facts if you can write headlines that employ the phrase "abortion mill murder"?

[The Blaze]
[Planned Parenthood]