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Planned Parenthood and mammograms

Pro-life groups like Live Action love to charge Planned Parenthood with lying when it comes to whether the organization provides women with mammograms.

Does Planned Parenthood provide mammograms? The literal answer appears to be "no," they do not. That being said, Planned Parenthood provides a) many breast exams a year (according to The Hill, 750,000), and b) referrals to organizations that do provide mammograms, much like many basic health care organizations.

As with negative political advertising, then, the activists attacking Planned Parenthood are indulging in myopia, which allows them to focus on something that is literally true while failing to see the bigger and more relevant picture. The larger and more relevant picture in this case is that Planned Parenthood provides, among other preventative and primary care, access to breast exams and mammograms for women. If those women are poor and in areas (like in rural Texas) where Planned Parenthood is one of the only places to access affordable care and referrals, then cutting off the organization's funding will deny women important health care wholly unrelated to abortion.

This controversy over mammograms is just one battle in a larger campaign to set an image in the public mind of what Planned Parenthood is, fundamentally. Is Planned Parenthood an organization that provides a range of health care services to women, or is Planned Parenthood a profit-driven abortion industry?

Which image seems more convincing depends in part on what statistics one cites about the organization. Planned Parenthood, in absolute numbers and in proportion to other abortion providers, provides a lot of abortions. Abortions, however, only make up a small proportion of Planned Parenthood's overall activities-- about 3%. It is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, but I think it is fairest to say that while Planned Parenthood is a major abortion provider it is also primarily a provider of basic health care for women.

If one concludes that its overall body of work is valuable, then one will support continued funding of Planned Parenthood, in particular its work providing free and low-cost health care for poor women. If one sees Planned Parenthood's abortion work as unacceptable regardless of what else it does, then one will likely object to taxpayer funding of the overall organization, as it appears to indirectly subsidize the abortion side of the business.

Note that, in terms of adopting one perspective or the other, whether Planned Parenthood directly or indirectly provides mammograms is simply irrelevant.

Links:

Article in The Hill about Planned Parenthood and mammograms (October 25, 2012): SBA List blasts Obama for saying Planned Parenthood provides mammograms

Article in the National Review Online that is a good example of the focus on the mammogram question and the emphasis on Planned Parenthood's provision of abortions (October 17, 2012): Celebrating Planned Parenthood's Birthday with a Mammogram Myth

Another article in the National Review Online (October 17, 2012): Planned Parenthood Staff: The President is Wrong, We Don't Provide Mammograms

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