Planned Parenthood Looks to 2020 Dems to End ‘State of Emergency’ on Abortion

Abortion rights advocates supporters and staff of Planned Parenthood hold a rally outside
Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Planned Parenthood will host a Democrat 2020 candidate forum on June 22 as the nation’s largest abortion vendor says its business is in a “state of emergency.”

“The 2020 elections are our biggest opportunity yet to fight back against anti-reproductive health politicians intent on taking away our health care and our rights,” states Planned Parenthood about its forum dubbed “We Decide.”

Most of the Democrat candidates running for president in 2020 are expected to participate in the event, which will be held in Columbia, South Carolina, on the weekend of the state Democrat Party’s convention.

The forum is meant to provide information on the candidates’ plans to protect abortion rights, and also to serve as a get-out-the-vote effort.

“It’s crystal clear that access to reproductive health care — including safe, legal abortion — is a top issue heading into 2020,” said Kelley Robinson, Planned Parenthood Action Fund executive director, according to The Independent. “If the 13 million-plus Planned Parenthood supporters turn out to the polls and activate their networks, they can tip the 2020 election.”

The forum is advertised as Dr. Leana Wen, Planned Parenthood president, has called a “state of emergency” on abortion on demand in the country. The “emergency” is that more states, including AlabamaMississippi ,GeorgiaLouisianaMissouri, have passed laws that restrict most abortions.

“Unlike a state of emergency that is called after natural disasters, this is a man-made disaster that is putting people’s lives and health in danger,” wrote Wen in a column at Rewire earlier this month.

Though Planned Parenthood has increased the number of abortions it performs in its clinics, many of its other services, such as prenatal care and well-woman exams, have declined, making it more difficult for the abortion vendor to advertise itself as a “healthcare” provider worthy of taxpayer funding.

Wen continues to claim women’s “lives and health” are “in danger” if abortion is restricted, and recently admitted abortion is her organization’s “core mission.”

“We are in a state of emergency for reproductive health in America, and it requires a true emergency response,” she wrote. “Anti-abortion politicians in states across the country have enacted extreme, dangerous, and unconstitutional abortion bans that will endanger lives.”

However, Glenn Kessler at the Washington Post recently concluded two statements Wen and others have repeatedly made, to prop up Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry, are false.

In Wen’s claim that restricting abortion is “dangerous” for women’s lives, Planned Parenthood’s president told NowThisNews, “We know what happens when our health centers are forced to close around the country. In Texas, 30,000 women went without access to care. Maternal mortality rates increased.”

In a fact-check column in May, with the headline, “No, maternal mortality did not spike in Texas after funding cuts to abortion clinics,” Kessler noted Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) repeated the same claim in comments in a House Ways and Means Committee hearing.

The data cited by Beyer on the alleged increase in maternal deaths in Texas was shown to be flawed more than one year ago, and yet is still being cited as well by Wen, who frequently touts her physician’s credentials.

To summarize, the study claimed the maternal mortality rate (MMR) in Texas had quickly doubled, and abortion supporters and left-wing media added the spin that the “doubling” was due to Texas’ defunding of Planned Parenthood.

As Kessler explained, Marian MacDorman conducted the flawed study on MMR in Texas that generated the claim. The study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Obstetrics and Gynecology (ObGyn).

The Texas Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force found errors in the original study and corrected the 2012 data from 38.4 deaths per 100,000 live births to 14.6 per 100,000 live births.

Kessler found Beyer’s comments to be false, and Wen herself simply repeated a claim that was debunked a year ago.

Later in May, Kessler gave Wen “four Pinocchios” for her repeated statement, “Thousands of women died every year pre-Roe,” and her warnings that, should Roe v. Wade be overturned, “we know what will happen, which is that women will die.”

After looking at statistics from the 1930s – prior to the arrival of antibiotics – cited by both Wen and the pro-abortion rights American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), Kessler wrote:

Wen is a doctor, and the ACOG is made up of doctors. They should know better than to peddle statistics based on data that predates the advent of antibiotics. Even given the fuzzy nature of the data and estimates, there is no evidence that in the years immediately preceding the Supreme Court’s decision, thousands of women died every year in the United States from illegal abortions.

Kessler added that abortion advocates “hurt their cause when they use figures that do not withstand scrutiny.”

“These numbers were debunked in 1969 — 50 years ago — by a statistician celebrated by Planned Parenthood,” he concluded. “There’s no reason to use them today.”

 

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