Attacks on Planned Parenthood Have Nothing to do with Improving Care

As a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood, I have watched, frustrated, as politicians chip away at reproductive rights. The news is grim and constant: a new waiting period at the state level, doctors forced to lie to patients and tell them abortion causes cancer, a center in an underserved area that must shut down because providers cannot get hospital admitting privileges.

Supporters of these measures paint themselves as concerned about safety. However, these tactics have something in common: they are deceptive methods to limit rights, and they do not protect patients.

The failed effort to defund Planned Parenthood in the Senate and the attack over tissue donation are no different. They have nothing to do with improving care, and are simply the latest scheme for making abortion harder to access, with the ultimate goal of ending safe and legal abortion.

By now, many have viewed the deceptively edited hidden camera videos released by extremists. Nothing in these videos suggests any violation of law. The full tapes show that charges that Planned Parenthood profits from women’s decisions to donate fetal tissue are false and outrageous. That has not stopped anti-abortion politicians from using them to try to defund Planned Parenthood–which, of course, was the intention of the militant group behind the videos.

In the 1990s, radical anti-abortion groups shocked the nation with clinic bombings and arsons, as well as murdering doctors in their workplaces and homes. Their tactics were abhorrent and easy to disavow, which is why they have had to change the way they operate. Make no mistake though, their mission has not changed.

This latest attack started three years ago with the creation of a phony company, which targeted Planned Parenthood and tried to get physicians to discuss unethical and criminal activity that they don’t engage in or know anything about. Because these radical anti-abortion groups (and the politicians who agree with them) cannot make their point by using facts, they instead make flimsy claims that don’t hold up to scrutiny.

I wish they could just be honest. Being honest would mean that instead of attacking Planned Parenthood, politicians would have to acknowledge that one in five women has relied on Planned Parenthood for care. Being honest would require politicians to throw out state-mandated scripts that force doctors to parrot dubious ideas not supported by evidence-based medicine.

Being honest would mean acknowledging that abortion has a lower rate of complication than dental surgery or colonoscopies. Real honesty would mean admitting Planned Parenthood is an educator as well as a healthcare provider, reaching 1.5 million young people and families. It would also mean admitting Planned Parenthood has been a tremendous source of good for nearly 100 years.

In recent weeks, attacks on Planned Parenthood stalled a bill that would have helped wounded and paralyzed veterans access fertility treatments. A breast cancer bill also stalled over concerns that it might accidentally fund Planned Parenthood. These are not the actions of politicians who care about families.

The truth is that anti-abortion activists and politicians benefit from their dishonesty. They trust that the average person won’t know medical facts and can be swayed by inflammatory sound bytes.

They assume we don’t know our own history. In 1993, Congress lifted the Reagan-era ban on using donated fetal tissue in research. Senator Mitch McConnell and Representatives Lamar Smith and Fred Upton voted to overturn the ban. That hasn’t stopped them from condemning Planned Parenthood now over fetal tissue donation.

We cannot let false narratives spun by opponents stand as fact, when we know the real story.

What opponents refuse to recognize is how deeply Planned Parenthood providers care about patients, and that they do this work even in the face of hostility. Opponents have not seen the dedication of Planned Parenthood of New York City’s all-volunteer Activist Council, a group of passionate individuals who give our time to phone bank, canvass, plan fundraisers, table at events, and much more–all because we know that without Planned Parenthood, there would be less access to birth control, cancer screenings, STD testing and treatment, and safe abortion.

Each moment spent on political posturing is one we are not talking about the threat of climate change; about the role of dark money in elections; about police brutality and criminal justice reforms; about income inequality, paid family leave, and raising the minimum wage.

It’s time for politicians to stop aligning themselves with false attacks. It’s time to put patients above partisan politics. The group behind these videos and their allies in Washington will stop at nothing in their mission to cut patients off from care. But there will always be providers, staff, volunteers, and activists who will make sure they don’t succeed.

By Colleen Hamilton,  a member of Planned Parenthood of New York City Action Fund’s Activist Council and Co-Chair of the Political Action Group.