Does Planned Parenthood provide prenatal care and mammograms to women?

How many abortions does Planned Parenthood perform?
How many abortions does Planned Parenthood perform?

(Source)

A new video put out by Live Action takes a look at the claim that Democrats make that Planned Parenthood provides prenatal care to pregnant women.

But that’s not all – what about the claim made by Democrats that Planned Parenthood provides mammograms to women?

Life Site News explains the myth and the reality.

Excerpt:

The day before hundreds of pro-life activists prepared to flood Planned Parenthood’s offices with requests to schedule a mammogram, the organization issued a statement admitting that they do not offer the cancer screening procedure at any of their facilities.

The calls were placed today as part of “Call Planned Parenthood to Schedule Your Imaginary Mammogram Day” – an event organized by pro-life activists in response to President Obama’s statement during the presidential debate Tuesday that the abortion organization offers mammograms.

“There are millions of women all across the country, who rely on Planned Parenthood for, not just contraceptive care, they rely on it for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings,” the president had said, repeating a claim he had made earlier this summer in an interview with Glamour magazine.

But Obama isn’t the only one.

The notion that Planned Parenthood offers mammograms is one of the most enduring myths about the abortion giant. The claim is regularly trotted out by pro-abortion politicians eager to defend taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, but wary of invoking its controversial status as the country’s leading provider of abortions.

Not only does Planned Parenthood not provide mammograms, but the abortions they perform have been linked to the epidemic of breast cancer that is afflicting women today.

What about the claim that only 3% of what Planned Parenthood does is doing abortions?

False:

Practically every defender of the organization, fighting to preserve its federal funding, reverts to the 3 percent figure. How could you possibly, they ask, defund a group that devotes itself overwhelmingly to uncontroversial procedures and services for women?

[…]The 3 percent factoid is crafted to obscure the reality of Planned Parenthood’s business. The group performs about 330,000 abortions a year, or roughly 30 percent of all the abortions in the country. By its own accounting in its 2013–2014 annual report, it provides about as many abortions as Pap tests (380,000). The group does more breast exams and provides more breast-care services (490,000), but not by that much.

The 3 percent figure is derived by counting abortion as just another service like much less consequential services. So abortion is considered a service no different than a pregnancy test (1.1 million), even though a box with two pregnancy tests can be procured from the local drugstore for less than $10.

By Planned Parenthood’s math, a woman who gets an abortion but also a pregnancy test, an STD test, and some contraceptives has received four services, and only 25 percent of them are abortion. This is a little like performing an abortion and giving a woman an aspirin, and saying only half of what you do is abortion.

Such cracked reasoning could be used to obscure the purpose of any organization. The sponsors of the New York City Marathon could count each small cup of water they hand out (some 2 million cups, compared with 45,000 runners) and say they are mainly in the hydration business. Or Major League Baseball teams could say that they sell about 20 million hot dogs and play 2,430 games in a season, so baseball is only .012 percent of what they do.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood want to use its health services as leverage to preserve its abortions, as if you can’t get one without the other. Of course, this is nonsense. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides free or low-cost breast- and cervical-cancer screenings — without aborting babies. State health departments provide free cancer screenings — without aborting babies. Community health centers provide a range of medical services — without aborting babies.

I think it’s a good idea to be able to respond to Planned Parenthood’s rhetoric. These are the people who kill babies, and we have to be able to respond to their false claims. When a majority of people learn the truth about the baby killing business, it will stop.

Trump signs executive order to build border wall and sanction sanctuary cities

Trump signs good executive action = GOOD TRUMP
Trump signs good executive action = GOOD TRUMP

I’m astonished to find myself blogging for a fourth time in a row on “Good Trump” when there hasn’t been any “Bad Trump” in between. There has been talk about things that would be Bad Trump, but all the actions so far have been Good Trump.

Story from Townhall.com:

As expected, President Donald J. Trump has just signed two executive orders that call for the construction of a border wall and outlines a new agenda regarding immigration enforcement. It’s done. Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs reported one of the orders puts an end to catch-and-release, U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel by 5,000 people, and seeks to put an end to asylum fraud.

The second order seeks to end sanctuary cities, identify criminal illegal aliens, triple the amount of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and empower them to enforce federal immigration laws. It will also create victims advocacy office for Americans who loved ones had been victimized by people who should have never been here in the first place.

Regarding the second order, the Washington Examiner reports that the sanctions against sanctuary cities will involve cutting off the flow of federal tax dollars:

President Trump will direct his secretary of homeland security to examine ways the administration can suspend grants to so-called “sanctuary cities,” or areas where law enforcement agents do not enforce immigration laws, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Wednesday.

“What the executive order does is, it directs the secretary to … look at funding streams that are going to these cities … and figure out how we can defund those streams,” Spicer said of an executive action Trump was expected to sign later in the day.

Why is Trump doing this?

It might be worth remembering the case of Kate Steinle, so that we understand what caused American voters to elect Trump.

Five-time deportee, seven-time convicted felon Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez said in a new interview Sunday with a local ABC News affiliate that he came to San Francisco because he knew the sanctuary city would not hand him over to immigration officials.

[…]Lopez-Sanchez has confessed to shooting Kathryn Steinle last Wednesday at Pier 14.

Had San Francisco authorities not refused a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainer request, Lopez-Sanchez may not have been in the United States and Steinle might still be alive.

The Obama administration held to a pattern of releasing illegal immigrants who had been convicted of serious crimes:

[…][A]fter Kathryn Steinle was killed July 1, allegedly by an illegal immigrant with seven felony convictions, Obama said . . . nothing.

[…]Why has Obama been so reticent to speak out? Perhaps it is because any soul-searching in this case would require him to confront the fact that his administration has been releasing tens of thousands of dangerous illegal immigrants with criminal convictions into our communities — including many who have gone on to commit murder.

It got little notice, but on May 28, Sarah Saldana, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, admitted in a letter to Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) that between fiscal years 2010 and 2014, the Obama administration had released “121 unique criminal aliens who had an active [deportation] case at the time of release and were subsequently charged with homicide-related offenses.”

Think about that: 121 times over the past four years, the administration has released an illegal immigrant with prior criminal convictions who went on to be charged with murder. That is one every 12 days.

Like Obama, Hillary Clinton favored amnesty for illegal immigrants, less border security and no wall. She didn’t care about the victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, because she had bodyguards with guns to protect her. And so, that’s how we got President Trump and the Trump wall. It wasn’t that voters didn’t like the idea of a female President, it was that voters didn’t like the idea of a President who would bend over backwards for people who should not be here, and who treated the safety and security of taxpayers with contempt.

Trump signs executive order to unblock construction of two major pipelines

 

Trump signs good executive action = GOOD TRUMP
Trump signs good executive action = GOOD TRUMP

I can’t believe that I am blogging on “Good Trump” three days in a row. Rest assured, when there is “Bad Trump”, I will cover that as well.

The Daily Signal reports:

President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders to move forward with two major pipelines blocked by the Obama administration, but with the caveat the U.S. would “renegotiate” the terms of building the projects.

“It’s subject to a renegotiation of terms by us,” Trump said before signing an executive order on the Keystone XL oil pipeline. “We’re going to renegotiate some of the terms, and, if they’d like, we’ll see if we can get that pipeline built.”

The Dakota Access oil pipeline’s construction was also “subject to terms and conditions to be negotiated by us,” Trump said before signing his second executive order on pipelines Tuesday.

One of those conditions is pipelines must be built with U.S.-produced steel, Trump said. Union leaders met with Trump Tuesday morning.

Trump also signed executive orders to expedite environmental reviews of infrastructure projects to get them built more quickly.

The Obama administration blocked Keystone XL and Dakota Access, drawing cheers from environmental activists opposed to using fossil fuels. Former President Barack Obama argued Keystone XL’s approval would tarnish America’s image as a champion against global warming.

The former administration blocked the Dakota Access oil pipeline in November 2016, after environmentalists and American Indians protested for months to block the pipeline. Activists argued the pipeline would impact Standing Rock Sioux sacred tribal sites—though they produced little evidence of this.

Environmentalists were furious with Trump’s pipeline executive orders, but supporters argue it will be better for jobs and the environment to build more pipelines.

Trump shouldn’t care about the global warming fascists, as I can guarantee you that none of them voted for him, and none of them ever will.

However, I am worried about what I am hearing about Trump on free trade. Every conservative believes in free trade, because conservatives understand basic economics, and basic economics teaches that free trade is always better for both parties of the trade.

If Trump puts tariffs (taxes on trades) on foreign goods coming into the United States, (e.g. – smartphones, computers, electronics and cars), then American consumers will pay MORE for those items.

Look what the American Enterprise Institute says:

America’s low-income households benefit the most from free trade and having access to cheap imports because they spend a greater share of their budgets on traded goods like clothing, footwear, household items, school supplies, appliances, toys, and furniture (think Walmart shoppers)…

[…]America’s low-income households have the most to lose from greater restrictions on free trade with import quotas, protective trade tariffs, border taxes, and other trade barriers. If Trump starts a trade war with tariffs and border taxes, it will be a “war on the poorest Americans…

That’s why I am skeptical about Trump’s protectionist tendencies. Some of the people who got him elected are uneducated when it comes to basic economics, and they are pressuring him to do stupid things that will hurt all the consumers in a misguided effort to save the jobs of a few workers. Workers who would be better off getting re-trained and re-hired in a more challenging job. I’d much rather use government money for re-training someone who loses their job than slam all the poorest consumers with a tax on their consumer goods from foreign countries. No unemployment, but tuition for a trade school or university, and cut employer payroll taxes on them for 5 years after they graduate. It would be like increasing their value, then putting them on sale. That’s way better than tariffs.