Ohio governor and Republican presidential candidate John Kasich was confronted by a voter who identified herself as a student nurse at a town all meeting at George Mason University (GMU) yesterday who wanted to know why he signed the bill to defund Planned Parenthood.
Kasich's response was just about the most hollow hogwash you can imagine.
“As a future nurse, I recognize that primary care and prevention is the most cost-effective health care for our nation,” she continued. “But we are also facing an STD epidemic. Planned Parenthood’s largest percentage of services are toward STD treatment and prevention. Can you please tell me the economic and public health benefit of defunding an organization that has treated over 4 million people seeking STD services this last year?”
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On Monday, Kasich also appeared to use [heavily edited smear videos] as reason for defunding the organization, saying Planned Parenthood had “discredited itself” and that other women’s health centers would be funded instead.
“We consider women’s health to be critical,” he said, “but you don’t have to be captive towards delivering it through an organization that frankly is largely discredited.”
Planned Parenthood has apparently "discredited itself" by being the victim of a goddamn hoax that Kasich's own administration could not find evidence of. The Ohio state attorney general's office investigated Planned Parenthood and found no evidence that their clinics were selling body parts in some kind of black market bazaar.
Ohio is hardly alone. A dozen states have investigated Planned Parenthood and turned up exactly jack shit. Some states have actually been ordered to reimburse Planned Parenthood for legal costs incurred while fighting this hoax.
The organization has only been discredited insofar as John Kasich says they have. This ridiculous position is not reflected by a single poll of public opinion and it certainly isn't reflected by empirical reality.
Even if it were true that Planned Parenthood had been "discredited," that would not serve as a valid reason to effectively punish their patients who rely on the organization for a host of services none of which include abortion.
Only three Planned Parenthood clinics in Ohio provide abortion services. None of them have ever participated in a fetal tissue research program.