The day three men limited health care access for 13,000 N.H. women and their families
This week, three men on the state’s five-member Executive Council rejected contracts with Planned Parenthood that would have funded family planning and preventative health care services for 13,000 New Hampshire women and their families.
The rejected contracts would have provided funding for Planned Parenthood’s five New Hampshire health centers to deliver health care services including birth control, cancer screenings, tests and treatment for sexually transmitted infections and annual exams. The contracts specifically excluded abortion services.
To justify their votes, each man cited the series of secretly recorded videos produced by abortion opponents that show Planned Parenthood officials in other states discussing fees for fetal tissue donation. This, despite confirmation by Planned Parenthood that the group’s New Hampshire health centers do not participate in fetal tissue donation programs.
The men struggled for analogies.
Councilor Joe Kenney (R-Union) compared Planned Parenthood’s activities, which he called “inhumane” and “un-American,” to harvesting organs on the battlefield. “I equate it to, you know, if you had men and women on the battlefield and used their parts of their body for scientific research that we would be in outrage,” Kenney said.
(For the record, USA Today reports 140 lives have been saved by organs donated by U.S. service members who died on battlefields in Iraq or Afghanistan.)
Councilor David Wheeler (R-Milford) compared the relationship between the New England chapter of Planned Parenthood and the national organization to a McDonald’s franchisee “cooking their Big Macs wrong.”
“It would be like the McDonald’s Corporation,” Wheeler said. “They have several restaurants or franchisees that may be cooking their Big Macs wrong because they got instructions from headquarters. And that could be the same with all their affiliates. They need to be treated as one. They’re one corporation and we need to get this investigated and find out exactly what’s going on here for sure. This is criminal activity.”
Gov. Maggie Hassan shot back saying there is absolutely no evidence that the local Planned Parenthood chapter has ever engaged a patient in a conversation about donating tissue for medical research. “So there is no allegation on which the attorney general could act,” she said. “And that is the bedrock of a just criminal justice system, something in New Hampshire we are very, very proud of.”
Councilor Chris Sununu (R-Newfields), a pro-choice Republican who had previously voted to fund Planned Parenthood, was widely regarded as the swing vote. He praised Planned Parenthood’s work but conceded he would vote to reject the contracts due to the attacks on the national organization.
“As most people know, I’m pro-choice, I’m a supporter of Planned Parenthood. … They’ve done a fantastic job, a fantastic job providing these women services, these reproductive services. I’m a big believer, a huge believer,” he said. “That’s why I went against and really ticked off all my friends the past few years, because I believe it’s absolutely right.”
“But things are different right now,” Sununu explained. “We have to take a step back and just take a pause and say, ‘Is this a company and a business that we should be actively engaging in?’ … I think we need to take a step back,” Sununu concluded.
“The notion that [the allegations against planned parenthood nationally] should have been the reason for us in New Hampshire to deny women access to an organization that you’ve repeatedly praised in the last five minutes as an excellent organization is beyond me,” Hassan responded.
“It will certainly mean less cancer screening, less birth control, less work to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, more unintended pregnancy,” she concluded.
The council then voted 3-2 to reject the Planned Parenthood contracts. “New Hampshire Cancels $650,000 in Planned Parenthood Funding After It Sells Aborted Babies,” reported LifeNews.com.