Marco Rubio
seems to be confusing the tactics of Planned Parenthood and "crisis pregnancy centers." The latter withhold information from women about their options when pregnant, trying to pressure them not to consider abortion, while the former try to prevent unplanned pregnancies and then offer women a range of options to deal with unplanned pregnancies that do occur. But according to the Florida senator and rising Republican presidential candidate, it's Planned Parenthood that's in the pressure business:
"Now what you've done is you've created an industry—now what you've done is you've created an incentive for people to be pushed into abortions so that those [fetal] tissues can be harvested and sold for a profit," the Florida senator said Monday in an interview with KCCI.
Experts are very clear that
Planned Parenthood is not making a profit off of the small amounts it charges to cover the costs of fetal tissue donation, and even Rubio admitted he's not sure about the profit part. But any points he gets for not 100 percent insisting something is true that is absolutely untrue are
wiped off the scoreboard by his counterfactual insistence that Planned Parenthood is in the business of pressuring women into abortion:
Asked if his claim about women being pressured into abortions was a stretch, Rubio held firm. "Absolutely," he said. "If you go to one of these centers young women are provided very few options. In many places they're not told anything about, for example, adoption services that might be available to them. In essence, you come in and it's already predetermined. This is the direction—this is what this place does. It provides abortions, and we are going to channel you in that direction."
Neither Planned Parenthood or its supporters should back away from saying that yes, Planned Parenthood provides abortions. That's a needed service and without safe, legal providers, women die. It's still ludicrous to say that "this is what this place does. It provides abortions, and we are going to channel you in that direction" about an organization that provides
vastly more contraception and pregnancy testing than abortion and that does provide both prenatal care and adoption referrals.
But let's be blunt. Many women don't look to Planned Parenthood to tell them what they should do about an unplanned pregnancy, because that's something they're capable of thinking through on their own. They go to Planned Parenthood because they've already made a decision. And if they do go to Planned Parenthood for advice, they'll be told what it says on the website: "If you are pregnant, you have three options to think about — abortion, adoption, and parenting." I guess three could be considered "very few options," but if Rubio has other suggestions, he should speak up rather than running around making false accusations.
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