Malkin misinforms, part I
In her column published June 6, Michelle Malkin strings together a group of unrelated and irrelevant statements to prove her point. What she fails to acknowledge is that federal family planning dollars are never used to provide abortions or abortion referrals.
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Planned Parenthood does more than any other organization in the United States to prevent pregnancies and protect women’s health and safety. Malkin picks partial financial data from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s annual report. Were she to have more complete in her reporting she would have noted the following. Of the 10.5 million services provided in 2006 by the 107 affiliates nationwide, 38 % were for contraception, 29% were for diagnosis and treatment of STIs or diagnosis and counseling for HIV, 19% were for cancer screening, and 3% for abortion. Planned Parenthoods also provided prenatal care, infertility exams, midlife services, vasectomies, primary care and adoption referrals.
Planned Parenthood of Central Pennsylvania (PPCP), which has 5 health centers in south central Pennsylvania, has similar percentages for the 27,000 services we provided last year. We provide people with honest, factual, sexuality education. We use scarce public funds to take care of people who may not have the resources to do it themselves. We are critical to the health and well being of the communities we serve. More importantly, we strive to serve each individual who comes to us with the same care and consideration that we would give to our own mother, sister, brother, son. We trust women to make sound decisions for their families.
Malkin can rant and rave all she wants. We at PPCP know that there are thousands of women and men in Pennsylvania who are grateful that we have been there for them when they needed us. It’s that basic.
Suellen Craig
Planned Parenthood
Michael C. Martin · June 17, 2008 5:55 AM
The real issue here is not Michelle Malkin. There will always be people in the world like Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, Cal Thomas, Ann Coulter, and others who deliberately misprepresent the truth.
The real issue is why the peopole who make such decisions for the York Daily Record and York Sunday News choose to present the people of the greater York area with lies instead of truth. If the free press is to survive, it must be accountable for its actions. There are venues where liars can have their say. But when the local newspapers showcase liars they lend them a perception of credibility.
What sometimes escapes the owners and the editors of newspapers is that eventually the truth does come out, and when that happens newspapers that showcased liars lose credibility, readers, and of course the one thing that business cares about: money.