Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Louisiana lawmakers launch audit to prove that Planned Parenthood is using tax payer dollars to pay for abortions. Prove just the opposite instead.
Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast has not been using government funds to provide or recommend abortions in Louisiana, according to a report released Monday morning by the Louisiana Legislative Auditor.
"We found no indication that Planned Parenthood had recommended that a patient have an abortion or had performed an abortion for patients in our sample," said Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera in a letter to state Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Metairie, and state Rep. Frank Hoffman, R-West Monroe.
Martiny and Hoffman sponsored legislation last year that called for a widespread investigation and monitoring of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast to see if it was using public funding to recommend or provide abortions. The Legislature passed Martiny and Hoffman's resolutions overwhelmingly.
Planned Parenthood does not currently offer abortions at its sites in Louisiana, but the organization is building a new facility in New Orleans, where it has said it will provide the procedure.
Martiny and Hoffman pushed their legislation, in part, because Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast had been accused of using Medicaid funds inappropriately in Texas. The organization settled in a civil suit over the matter last summer, but has continued to deny any wrongdoing in that case.
The Louisiana auditor's office examined 26,000 Planned Parenthood claims that qualified for Medicaid reimbursements and found that all the payments were made for allowable procedures. Within the 26,000 claims, the auditor identified 22 patients who suffered miscarriages and reviewed six of those cases, where no abortion counseling was offered.
"Based on the file reviews, we did not find any indication that Planned Parenthood recommended an abortion or performed an abortion for these patients," Purpera wrote in his letter to state legislators.
What? Does this mean that Planned Parenthood was actually telling the truth and using government funds to do things such as provide birth control, educate women about STD's, and provide cancer screenings?
This is very important as it is part of the conservative's coordinated efforts to undermine Planned Parenthood, because in their mind it is an abortion mill even though providing termination of pregnancies only accounts for 3% of the services they provide.
The conservatives have successfully used misinformation and scare tactics in places like Texas to support slashing funds and essentially driving clinics out of business.
The truth is that Planned Parenthood has had a dramatic effect on the number of unintended pregnancies, and therefore greatly reduced the number of abortions in this country.
IF the conservatives were really interested in keeping the number of abortions to a minimum, instead of forcing pregnant women to give birth to children they are unprepared to raise, they would be working to provide Planned Parenthood with all they funds they could possibly use and trumpeting their successes far and wide.
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