Today the Sun reported on a Planned Parenthood speaking here in Ithaca. The article is available online here. The speaker, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood (yes, it IS a company), was Joe Sammons. I quote the Sun here:
Because Planned Parenthood does not use government funding for abortions, the organization’s stance on abortion should not apply to the recent government funding debate, Sammons said.
“I do not have the time to list every service that we use federal funds for, but I can tell you one that we do not: abortion,” Sammons said.
I guess Joe Sammon and the Sun must think Cornellians are stupid. But we’re not, and we at the Review, along with our fellow Cornellians and Americans, know that money is fungible. So whatever Joe says about abortion not receiving federal funding is a completely moot point.
The National Review has posted before about Planned Parenthood, and I feel it’s worthwhile, in light of Joe Sammons claim that “this [the funding debate] is about women’s health and giving women the freedom to make decisions about their lives.” The National Review reported that Planned Parenthood “fought a bill to make reporting of sex abuse mandatory, because Planned Parenthood allegedly feared that the legislation might overload the responsible agency with too many cases of suspected abuse.” Additionally, PP “challenged a Missouri law that required abortion clinics to meet the same standards as the ambulatory-surgery centers in the state. Its reason? Bringing its clinics into compliance with these medically accepted standards would be prohibitively costly.”
So the next time the Sun reports about a “fight for reproductive justice and access to affordable, nonjudgemental [sic] health care”, they should look a little more closely.
I think that criticizing them for this one is harsh. This is a news piece covering an event. They generally made it clear that this was the opinion of the speaker. However, that photo caption quotation that you mentioned in your last line was said as a matter of fact, but I think they intended to repeat the speaker’s message there, too. You are right, though, that they should have included some opposing views and general comments from students on both sides.
Even though I am not strictly against abortions, I find the constant tagline of “women’s reproductive rights” to be unconvincing. The counterargument is that her right to choose conflicts with someone’s right to live, and I think that they haven’t responded to that. But I have, in this article I wrote a few weeks ago on the topic: http://ezrakernell.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/the-abortion-article/
Hey Ezrakernell,
Thanks for commenting. I’m not prepared to argue about the ethics of abortion. I enjoyed reading your blog post and I think you presented the problem well. Blog posts like yours are more interesting than Sun report i responded too (and i’m not implying news reports are irrelevant).What I am better equipped to deal with are the claims that Planned Parenthood makes that I don’t find entirely truthful. As i’m sure you understood, that was my focus on this post.
And yes, you are right, the Sun was only reporting on the issue and the reporter/author did her job well. I was not trying to pick on this author. But in the context of what other reporting the Sun has reporting (see: the links provided in the first article of story), it seemed appropriate to criticize the Sun on the grounds of being a repeat-offender.