Image taken from americanprinciplesinaction.org Billboard

An anti-abortion group says that an advertising company bowed to pressure by removing jumbo billboards in Los Angeles that portray abortion as a form of genocide in the Hispanic community – a sequel to a billboard campaign that targeted the black community in New York and Georgia.

“The most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb,” reads the three signs on billboards space the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles purchased from CBS Outdoor. The billboards went up last Friday and were supposed to stay up for a month. But they are being taken down Friday after the group said supporters of abortion rights complained, calling the billboards racist.

“Like a similar ad campaign that ran in New York City, pro-abortion activists are desperately trying to cover up Planned Parenthood’s targeting of minorities, and will squelch free speech to do so,” said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the group. “These billboards tell the truth about the racist targeting of the Latino community, and have been up for a week. It’s clear these pro-abortion activists will go to any length, including discarding the First Amendment, to protect their abortion business in minority communities.”

But Gabriela Valle, the senior director of community education for California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, which led the crusade to take the billboards down, said those claims “are absolutely ridiculous on all levels.” “The fact is, they produced a racist ad that attacked Latino communities,” she said. “They cannot on one hand claim racism and answer that with a racist ad.”

Representatives of CBS Outdoors, an affiliate of CBS Corporation, did not return repeated messages. The Los Angeles chapter of Planned Parenthood cheered the removal of the billboards. “Planned Parenthood Los Angeles is happy to see these offensive and racist billboards are being taken down,” the group said in a statement to FoxNews.com. “Community organizations within Los Angeles led the effort to have these billboards removed.”

Twelve other organizations, including Planned Parenthood, supported the crusade. Valle said they called CBS Outdoor officials directly and told them that Latino advocates of reproductive justice were going to protest the billboards if they weren’t taken down. Valle said CBS Outdoor officials said they would take the ads down. Planned Parenthood told FoxNewsLatino.com last week that its organization does not target any particular race or ethnicity in their services. “I’m a Latina and personally it’s disturbing,” said Celina Vazquez, a spokeswoman for the group. “Planned Parenthood just absolutely believes that every woman regardless of her ethnicity has the right to make informed decisions about her health, of course in consultation with her family and her faith.”

Twelve percent of all abortion clinics are located in predominantly Latino neighborhoods, according to a 2008 report by the Guttmacher Institute. Latinas account for about 20 percent of all abortions, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Read More at

CHARMAINE YOEST

Anyone who believes PP is primarily concerned with the health of women and girls needs to look at the record.

As the 2012 budget battles began, Clare Coleman, CEO of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, took to the pages of the Washington Post. In a piece called “Five Myths about Planned Parenthood,” she argued that defunding the organization was an ignoble goal for members of Congress looking to cut the bloated federal budget.

She said she wanted to address “misperceptions” about the abortion-industry giant. She was joined in her goal on the front page of the Washington Post by reporter Sandhya Somashekhar, who painted a picture of Planned Parenthood that minimized the role abortion plays at the organization’s health-care affiliates.

In presenting Planned Parenthood as mainly focused on prevention, Ms. Coleman neglects to mention several statistics, gleaned from the organization’s own annual reports and fact sheets, that illustrate its heavy (and increasing) involvement in abortion, as well as its practices that routinely place women’s health and safety secondary to its own bottom line.

While the Washington Post declined to present an alternative to the Planned Parenthood way of thinking, there are a multitude of other facts to consider. To add to the discussion of whether Planned Parenthood should continue to be funded, let’s consider five truths about an industry that receives more than $360 million in taxpayer subsidies annually.

1. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider, performing (and profiting from) one out of every four abortions in the United States.

In 2009, abortion was a “service” that Planned Parenthood provided to 12 percent of its patients overall, and to 97.6 percent of its patients who reported themselves pregnant. It performed 332,278 abortions in that one year alone. That is an average of 910 abortions each and every day.

Since the average cost of an early surgical abortion was $451 (according to the Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s former “special affiliate”), abortion accounted for approximately 37 percent of Planned Parenthood’s health-care-center income in 2009. And that figure — nearly $150 million in revenue from abortion — is a low estimate, considering that Planned Parenthood also performs later and more expensive abortions.

In terms of time, money, and unduplicated patients — rather than the bloated “services” rhetoric — abortion contributes significantly more than the 3 percent Ms. Coleman implies to Planned Parenthood’s bottom line.

Read more at……http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/265590/five-truths-about-planned-parenthood-charmaine-yoest

Mike Pence’s amendment to defund Planned Parenthood passed 240-185 in the House.

By DAVID NATHER & KATE NOCERA

The House just approved Rep. Mike Pence’s amendment to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, checking off a hot-button social issue even as it set up a bigger showdown over defunding the health care law.

The vote was 240-185 with 11 Democrats voting for the amendment, and seven Republicans voting against. One member voted present. A group of Republicans on the floor applauded when the vote hit 218.

That amendment managed to suck up three hours of often emotional debate time Thursday night, which is a big part of the reason the health care law defunding votes got pushed into today.

Pence, of Indiana, touched off a vicious back-and-forth Thursday night in which Republicans insisted the organization is too aggressive about performing abortions and several Democrats charged that the GOP was waging a “war on women.”

Pence said the amendment captures a rough public consensus that they accept legal abortions, but don’t want to pay for them.

He did get House Majority Leader Eric Cantor to weigh in on his side, declaring, “The time has come to respect the wishes of the majority of Americans who adamantly oppose using taxpayer dollars for abortions.”

Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler called the amendment a “bill of attainder”- saying it was unconstitutional as such because the legislation was targeting a specific group.

“[An attainder is] a legislative enacted penalty, in this case no funding, directed at an identifiable person or organization to punish them for something. Article I Section 9 says ‘no bill of attainder or ex post facto should be passed.’ Fundamental foundation of constitutional law. If Planned Parenthood or anyone else is doing terrible things and ought to be punished, that’s up to the courts,” said the California congressman.

A longtime anti-abortion crusader, Pence has three times previously tried to cut off legislative funding, called Title X, for any group that provides abortions.

The money cannot be used to pay for abortions, and Pence has not argued that Planned Parenthood has used the funds to do so.

But he argues that cutting off support for millions of women’s health clinics would cut off their ability to perform the procedure.

“We should end the day when the largest abortion provider is the largest recipient of [Title X] federal funding,” he said.

“What’s clear to me, if you follow the money, you can actually take the funding supports out of abortion. We then have a much better opportunity to move forward to be a society that says yes to life.”

Planned Parenthood estimates it received a quarter of the $317 million in Title X funds appropriated last year. They use the money for pelvic exams, breast exams, safer-sex counseling and basic infertility counseling, among other things.

Pence took his fight against Planned Parenthood to the next level after the release of a series of videos by the group Live Action –videos that they say show Planned Parenthood employees advising actors posing as pimps on information on how to get abortions, STD testing and birth control for their underage prostitutes.

Cantor said last night that Planned Parenthood had been caught “red-handed.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/49830.html#ixzz1ERGk1UTx

By SARAH KLIFF
POLITICO

Anti-abortion groups will launch today an aggressive campaign aiming to strip Planned Parenthood of its federal funding.

A new website, Expose Planned Parenthood, went live late Tuesday backed by a coalition of national and local anti-abortion groups. The website, previewed exclusively to POLITICO, will serve as a hub for the movement’s efforts to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal funds.

The new campaign throws yet another obstacle in the way of already embattled abortion rights supporters, who have so far largely focused their activism on pushing back against H.R. 3. Republicans frame the bill as a way to bar taxpayer funding of abortion, but abortion rights advocates contend that it significantly restricts the definition of “rape” in a way that would curtail women’s rights.

That legislation, introduced by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), is set to be heard in Judiciary Committee’s constitution subcommittee next week.

“I’m surprised, given that the number one issue right now is jobs, that the Republican leadership would make an extreme position like [H.R. 3] one of their top three priorities of the session,” Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who co-chairs the House Pro-Choice Caucus, told POLITICO in an interview. “American voters … They’re not focused on abortion, they’re focused on how to get jobs.”

Since H.R. 3 was introduced last month, reproductive health advocates have seized on a provision that tightens federal regulations to only allow government-funding for abortion for pregnancies in which the mother’s life is endangered, or that are the product of incest or “forcible rape.” Activists argue that the new wording, first reported by Mother Jones on Friday, could have the effect of barring the federal funding of abortions that are covered under current law. Medicaid, for example, could be barred from covering abortion in cases of statutory rape, to which a minor may have consented.

“This legislation is a stark departure from the status quo and not only infringes on the rights of women to choose, but taxes them for their choices. It is a massive intrusion on a woman’s right to choose,” Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.), the other co-chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, said in a Tuesday statement.

The new anti-Planned Parenthood campaign, led by Susan B. Anthony List and Live Action, also includes Concerned Women for America, Americans United for Life, 40 Days for Life, Students for Life, the Family Research Council, and New Jersey Right to Life.

“If there is a point where we can say ‘this is too much,’ this is it,” Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser told POLITICO. “Contributing to a group willing to be a chief ally in the exploitation of women and girls is indeed too much. Taxpayer support of Planned Parenthood is just that.”

The site hosts an online action center where anti-abortion activists can lobby their members of Congress to support Rep. Mike Pence’s (R-Ind.) Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act, which would strip the group of federal funding. The outreach campaign will ask activists to lobby members through emails, letters to the editor and letters to local Congressional offices.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48651.html#ixzz1CoNIIEhb

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0211/48651.html#ixzz1CoM50tUU

That is changing very rapidly.

~~John Cronin~~

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE

Part of Gov. Chris Christie’s belt-tightening plan for New Jersey was the termination of $7.5 million in public funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in the state, a decision Democrats in the legislature countermanded with a bill that cleared the Senate with a 30-10 vote — sufficient to override a veto. But when that veto came and the Democrats scheduled an override vote, Republicans in the legislature backed down, and the measure failed 23-17.

Now, Planned Parenthood facilities in the state are shuttering their doors: