Planned Parenthood is all about abortion, yet provides contraceptive services to reduce the probability of an abortion? That makes sense...

Republicans have been hard at work in attempting to strip funding from Planned Parenthood. Texas Republican State Senator Ken Paxton is attempting to minimize the group's influence even further by prohibiting them from providing public school sexual education classes with any instructional materials or contraceptive resources.

With regard to this, Paxton has proposed a bill and during a recent hearing surrounding the bill, Renate Sims of Round Rock said the following to the Senate Education Committee:

"[I strive to teach my five children that] married sex and only married sex is appropriate. Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood and their affiliates can't possibly communicate this message effectively because of their inherent conflict of interest. If teenagers consistently viewed sex as something to be saved for marriage, Planned Parenthood would lose abortion business."

Let's think about this for a moment. Senator Paxton and company seem to believe the following:

1) Abortion is bad

2) Planned Parenthood provides contraceptive resources for sex ed classes

3) Planned Parenthood wants more sex to be had by young people and more abortions for a boost to their business

4) Planned Parenthood must be stopped

So, Planned Parenthood provides contraceptive resources to prevent unwanted pregnancies and through that, reduce abortions, yet they also want more unwanted pregnancies which would lead to an increase in abortions? That makes about as much sense as someone handing out a free gun to every citizen in this country in order to reduce gun violence.

Also, I'd hate to disappoint Renate Sims and many others, but Planned Parenthood would not lose a great amount of business if they didn't provide abortion services. In 2009, Planned Parenthood provided 11,383,900 procedures, just 332,278 of which dealt with abortion - 2.9% of the total number of procedures. Would Planned Parenthood lose some business? Sure. However, they'd maintain 97.1% of it. That would be like a sports analyst saying a team's second-string fullback - who comprised 2.9% of the team's total offense - getting injured would ruin the team's chances of attaining/maintaining success.

In light of all this, I think Planned Parenthood should come out with a new slogan, such as "Planned Parenthood - always providing contraception for abortions!"

I can also hear the group airing the following ad:

"We're Planned Parenthood and we love for people to have lots of unprotected sex. This leads to unwanted pregnancies, which leads to abortions, and that's where we come in. Even though only 3% of our business pertains to abortion, without it, we'd be stuck at 97% of what we were, so we'd basically be at 0%, well, plus 97. To increase abortions and maintain our business, we provide people with contraceptives. What better way to increase unwanted pregnancies and abortions than to make sure people are protected while engaging in the horizontal mambo and doing all they can to prevent those unwanted pregnancies and abortions? Support funding for Planned Parenthood, where we always provide contraception for your abortions!"

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/03/06/1679351/texas-planned-parenthood-sex-ed/

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/apr/08/jon-kyl/jon-kyl-says-abortion-services-are-well-over-90-pe/