Planned Parenthood is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health services in the United States and internationally. The health services range from STI/STD testing and treatment to contraception. However, the most controversial service they provide would be, undoubtedly, abortion. Many people associate Planned Parenthood with 'baby-killing' and do not believe it should receive government funding. To add fuel to the fire, videos were released by an activist group which claimed that Planned Parenthood officials were illegally selling fetal tissue for profit. Planned Parenthood denied all accusations, saying the tissue was donated and all services are non-profit. No wrongdoings were shown and there are currently no charges towards Planned Parenthood. It obviously did not stop the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. This is a misrepresentation by Republicans because they don't understand what Planned Parenthood actually does. On September 18, 2015, the House of Representatives passed the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, 241-187. The bill takes away funding for contraception, pap smears, and testing for sexually-transmitted infections for one year, unless it stops performing abortions. Planned Parenthood's main goal is to not kill infants or sell human tissue for profit. Planned Parenthood should be federally funded because its main goal is to provide prevention, support, and affordability of healthcare to both men and women. If it is defunded, men and women in need of healthcare would have nowhere to turn to.

One has to understand two things about Planned Parenthood that have been distorted. First, most of the things Planned Parenthood does isn't abortion. "It's affiliates provide about 10 million services a year: 4.4 million tests and treatments related to sexually transmitted diseases, 3.5 million birth control services, 1 million pregnancy tests, 500,000 breast exams, 378,000 pap tests, and 327,00 abortions" (Saletan). That means abortions make up about 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's work. Second, most of the money that Planned Parenthood gets from the federal government is Medicaid reimbursement. "It is paid as compensation to clinics to people covered by Medicaid. If those people choose other doctors or clinics, Planned Parenthood does not get paid" (Saletan). That means Planned Parenthood does not automatically receive it. It's crucial that the public understands these two facts in order to prevent people from making Planned Parenthood out to be hungry baby killers. 

Planned Parenthood provides many public services such as sex education. It's "one of the nation's leading providers of health care and the largest provider of sex education" (Educators stand ... ). For some unknown reason, there are people who see being the 'largest provider of sex education' as a bad thing. "In 2013-2014, Planned Parenthood affiliates spent more than $33 million on public policy activities and another $44 million on sex education, which included promoting so-called 'safer-sex' education in public schools. (Earll). Why is that portrayed as a negative? If there is at least one person that learns about sex education, then there will be one less unplanned child that is brought into this world. 

 By promoting sex education in schools, that will decrease the amount of teen pregnancies. "Even though the teen pregnancy rate has declined over the past few decades, the United States still has the highest teen pregnancy rate of the Western industrialized world" ("Teenagers in the United States ... "). A study that was conducted from 2006 to 2010 concluded that nearly half of teenagers are having intercourse. These females reporting having used, "the condom (reported by 96% of females), followed by withdrawal (57%) and the pill (56%)" (Lamb 3). This large amount of teenaged females who have had unprotected (withdrawal) intercourse leads to the statistic that, "for females aged 15-24, the probability of having had a birth before age 20 was 18%" (Hotz). Why is it important that children do not get pregnant and become parents before they are economically stable? The study, Education and Labor Market Consequences of Teenage Childbearing, shows a negative effect on education and labor market outcomes for teen mothers. "The irony is that reducing access to contraception is the surest way to increase the number of abortions. The inconsistent or incorrect use of contraception accounts for nearly half of the unintended pregnancies each year, and half of those end in abortion" (Charo). It is better to educate children on 'safe-sex' rather than not accepting the fact that kids will eventually discover what sex is, which will lead to a higher chance of an unintended pregnancy. 

On September 29, 2015, there was a congressional hearing over federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Cecile Richards, the CEO of Planned Parenthood, was grilled for four hours regarding various issues. One of the GOP Congress member's favorite topics was that Planned Parenthood does not have any mammogram machines. "They considered this a killer 'gotcha' line, even though Planned Parenthood is a family planning clinic focused on sexual health care and prevention: STI tests, contraception, and other services" (Marcotte). These services are provided in order to make it easier for sexually active people, mostly premenopausal women, to have a healthy sex life. "About 80 percent of [Planned Parenthood's] clients receive health services to prevent unintended pregnancy, which prevents approximately 516,000 unintended pregnancies each year" (Saletan). While Richards tried to get the point across repeatedly, mentioning that the group's clinics refer women for mammograms, the Republicans refused to listen. The GOP is not educated on the topic of women's healthcare, so they misrepresent the organization and what it does. 

Another misrepresentation the GOP Congress members had during the congressional hearing was that women should just get their Pap smears from the Boys and Girls Club, which is a national organization of local chapters that provide after-school programs for young people. Some Congressmen recommended using Planned Parenthood's federal funding on "counseling for the more or less non-existent trauma of abortion regret, and in one case, on the Boys and Girls Club" (Marcotte). First of all, most of Planned Parenthood's funding comes from Medicaid reimbursements, which means women go to Planned Parenthood clinics for care, and Medicaid receives the bill. There was not a single Republican that could explain how the Boys and Girls Club was going to help Medicaid patients in need of Pap smears. Basically, they were implying that women should not be using the "slutty health care that Planned Parenthood provides in the first place" (Marcotte). If the GOP keeps misrepresenting what Planned Parenthood does, hundreds of thousands of women are going to be without proper and affordable healthcare.

When the GOP misrepresents what Planned Parenthood does, they are actually offending women as a whole. The most misogynistic argument that was made during the hearing had to be by Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin. He said, "When I look at cities around me that have a Planned Parenthood clinic ... as a guy, I could go to many clinics locally that have all the machines that one would need" (Marcotte). What about 'as a woman'? He then went on to say, "I guess what I'm getting at is if Planned Parenthood disappeared tomorrow in those towns, there would still be a couple of clinics providing all the ... medical care you would want" (Marcotte). Grothman's comment isn't beneficial due to the fact that we are not men. Misrepresentation and misogyny go hand in hand when it comes to the GOP and Planned Parenthood.

During the hearing, John Mica of Florida explained that the GOP's main issue is that many Americans do not want their tax money used for abortions. This complaint does not make sense due to the Hyde Amendment. "It prevents federal funds from being used for abortions unless the pregnancy threatens the woman's life or was caused by rape or incest" (Ross).  People who are against Planned Parenthood argue that "it can still use the tax dollars for non-abortion related expenses ... thus freeing up other funds to promote and provide abortions" (Earll). That is an understandable concern, but if you defund Planned Parenthood solely on that, then that means no organization that performs abortions can receive public funds. "In theory, every dollar is fungible. For example, no matter how carefully you separate the accounting, aid to Israel can help it build settlements in the West Bank" (Saletan). In order to prevent that mixing, one would have to stop the government from paying for anything.

According to Republicans, Planned Parenthood makes too much money, but also not enough. House members, including Mia Love of Utah and Paul Gosar of Arizona, talked about how Planned Parenthood must be earning an excess amount of money off abortions. That is due to abortions "providing about 15 percent of the organization's revenue (mostly because abortions are more expensive than Pap smears or birth control prescriptions)" (Marcotte). What does not make sense is that Republicans are also arguing that the organization is secretly using federal money to pay for abortions. Republicans claim that both abortions are "an expensive revenue-making service that Planned Parenthood uses to fund the rest of the organization, and that Planned Parenthood is offering abortions too affordably and using its other services to subsidize it" (Marcotte). It's not possible to be making too much money, but also not enough.

If the House permanently eliminates federal funding for the organization, "it would cost the government tens of millions of dollars and, like the one-year cutoff, deprive as many as 650,000 women at least partially of access to healthcare" (Hiltzik). According to the Congressional Budget Office, "the one-year defunding would produce about $235 million in federal savings, but the real costs would be borne by low-income and rural women ... and several thousand unwanted pregnancies and births would occur" (Hiltzik). Some of the savings from the funding cutoff would be reduced by the cost of covering the births that would result in caring for the children as they grow up. The permanent cutoff would increase the number of unwanted births and therefore those costs. According to the Guttmacher Institute, "45% of all births in the U.S. are covered by Medicaid, which includes 68% of the 1.5 million unplanned births per year. Family planning, including the services provided by Planned Parenthood, saved the nation about $15.5 billion in 2010" (Hiltzik). 

The issue of the government funding Planned Parenthood is not only a financial issue, but a moral issue as well. The Republican Party will make lots of arguments to justify their extreme actions, but there is one simple reason why Planned Parenthood got defunded: Republicans want to outlaw a woman's right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy. It's an obvious truth that people need to realize. Republicans say the whole issue started when deceptive videos were first released in July, which were made by an anti-abortion group. The group attempted to make it appear that Planned Parenthood was violating fetal tissue research laws. Surprisingly, the "laws were adopted with strong bipartisan support based on the work of President Reagan's 1988 blue-ribbon panel" (Maloney). 

 When facts that contradict the GOP's actions and statements are brought up, it never seems to matter. For example, when Americans learned that the videos released by the anti-abortion group had dozens of "unexplained splices and edits cutting out phrases like "we're not looking to make money from this," that didn't matter" (Maloney). When Americans learned that "1% of Planned Parenthood centers had any involvement in fetal tissue donation, that did not matter either" (Maloney). The reason the facts are irrelevant is because the main issue is about an ideological opposition to a woman's right to choose by a 50-year-old man in Congress who thinks he has a right to make a woman's most personal health care decision for her.  

One of the most personal health care decisions a woman can make is whether to have an abortion or not. If she does decide to have an abortion, the aborted fetal tissue can be used for medical research. Even though it might seem extreme in light of recent events that have occurred, such as the video, fetal tissue research and therapy have many beneficial uses. Fetal tissue research is often portrayed as "ghoulish vivisection and body-part snatching, but this precious resource helps in finding new preventive and therapeutic interventions for devastating diseases" (Charo). Shockingly, every person in America has benefitted from research using fetal tissue. For example, "every child who's had chickenpox, rubella, or polio can thank the scientists who used fetal tissue to create the vaccines" (Charo). Critics are quick to detest abortion, yet they have unknowingly used the vaccines and treatments that have come from fetal tissue research. By using the public's unfamiliarity with the realities of fetal tissue research, anti-abortion groups have contributed to the current war on abortion. They have also given people the idea that a woman's body can be controlled by someone other than the woman.

Politicians have no right to control the private health care decisions of women. "The first Planned Parenthood was opened in 1916 in Brooklyn, New York. During this time, women still couldn't vote, sign contracts, have banks accounts, or divorce abusive husbands, yet they had resources for their contraceptive health" (Jacobs). It's now 2016, exactly 100 years later, and politicians are still trying to take that away from women. Men can walk into almost any drug store or gas station to buy contraceptives, but women have to go through a lot more in order to get theirs. Planned Parenthood has allowed women to obtain contraceptives more easily and more affordably, therefore helping women have the same opportunities as men. 

Equal rights to all people in the United States is protected under the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. This includes women's rights to equal economic and social opportunity. This is related to the availability of contraceptives and reproductive health, which in turn is essential to women's rights and gender roles. When women are allowed to control their own reproduction, they gain the ability to "enter the workforce on their own terms and with great control of their lives" (Seigel). This way, women can be more prepared to enter the workforce. Then after they gain economic stability, women will be able to create a better life for themselves, and for their future children. All of this can happen if Planned Parenthood is federally funded. As shown in a study by Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz, "the current increase in women pursuing jobs in law, medical, and business administration degrees is a direct result of availability of contraceptives" (Golden & Katz). In order to improve women's social standing, and for them to become more productive members of the workforce, they need access to contraceptives, which is achieved through the continued federal funding of Planned Parenthood. 

Now that the Planned Parenthood Act has been in effect for about 8 months now, it has snowballed into an even bigger disaster. Many states such as Texas have introduced an abortion law that has women waiting longer, and paying more. A reason for that is because "1 out of 4 women in Texas is uninsured, which is the highest rate in the nation" (Stand with ... ). In response to the new regulations, many people claim that they "are impossible to meet" (Goodnough). Just recently, Republican Gov. Mike Pence signed a bill into law making Indiana the second state to ban abortions because of fetal genetic abnormalities such as Down syndrome. Pence called the bill "a comprehensive pro-life measure that affirms the value of all human life" (Chokey). The bill has been criticized by a national group of gynecologists and several female Republican members of the GOP-dominated Indiana Legislature, who say it goes too far in telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. "We know that you're going to be forcing women and families to suffer emotionally because they are going to be forced to carry pregnancies that are not viable," said Kate Connors, director of communications for the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. How does a man get to decide if a woman should or should not have an abortion knowing her child will have a fetal genetic abnormality? That is both unsafe for the mother and for the child, not to mention extremely unfair. It would be extremely difficult bringing your child into the world already knowing he or she will have a fetal genetic abnormality. I applaud the women who do, but I understand the women who aren't able to because t's a huge time commitment, great responsibility, and an even greater risk.

The benefits of Planned Parenthood are endless, but the GOP fails to realize that. They are stubborn when it comes to talking about Planned Parenthood because their main issue with the organization is solely abortion. They are relentless when it comes to misrepresenting what Planned Parenthood actually does. No matter how many facts they are told that explain that abortion is the smallest part of Planned Parenthood, they still refuse to listen. Planned Parenthood is the reason why many women are able to have economic stability. Planned Parenthood is the reason why the government saved "$15.5 billion in 2010" (Hiltzik). Planned Parenthood is not an organization aimed at killing babies and selling human tissue for profit. Planned Parenthood should be federally funded because its central goal is prevention, support, and affordability to both men and women. 

