New Hot Meme: Planned Parenthood Reduces Abortion

Planned Parenthood reduces the number of abortions!!! That's what you'd be led to believe if you were watching or reading the mainstream media. But hey, you'd also think that the killing of a lion and the destruction of a robot in Philadelphia were national tragedies. (Funny how a robot getting its arms and legs ripped off is a national story but the dismemberment of humans is virtually ignored.)

But saying Planned Parenthood reduces abortions is like saying cigarette companies reduce the number of smokers because, hey, smokers die every day from smoking so clearly they're working hard to reduce the number of smokers! Or that Hillary is working hard to prevent future violence against Americans in Benghazi.

Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times wrote that he simply can not understand why pro-lifers would want to defund Planned Parenthood when the organization does sooooo much to prevent abortions.

Seriously.

Planned Parenthood loved this spin so much that they tweeted it out.

Republicans, indignant about abortion, are trying to destroy a gov program that helps prevent 345k abortions a year. http://t.co/cwl4DBQYhz

— Planned Parenthood (@PPact) August 3, 2015

Kristof wrote:

TO appreciate the dumbing down of American politics, consider this: Conservative Republicans, indignant about abortion, are trying to destroy a government program that helps prevent 345,000 abortions a year. Inevitably in politics there are good ideas and bad ideas. But occasionally there are also moronic ideas — such as the House Republican proposal to kill America’s main family planning program, Title X. The upshot would be more pregnancies, more abortions, more AIDS, more sexually transmitted infections and more women dying of cervical and breast cancer. Ending the program would impoverish young mothers and impede the formation of stable two-parent families that conservatives rightly argue help overcome poverty. It’s baffling that House Republicans are trying to eliminate a 45-year-old bipartisan initiative that is one of the country’s anti-poverty successes — and also perhaps America’s most successful anti-abortion initiative.

Now comes the funny part.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post argues the same exact thing in his column on Friday. Sheesh. It's almost like the media received a talking point from Planned Parenthood or something.

Milbank argued that efforts to defund Planned Parenthood are “sure to increase the number of abortions.”

NRO's Michael New points out there are a few problems with these arguments -they're called facts. Michael New points out:

Milbank also argues that if contraception were less available, the unintended-pregnancy rate would increase. But there’s an impressive body of academic research which shows that sexual activity increases with the increased availability of contraception. A 2003 Guttmacher Institute study showed that contraception use and abortion rates rose simultaneously in several countries. A 1996 Quarterly Journal of Economics Study, which was co-authored by Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, found that the advent of the birth-control pill led to more sexual activity and more unintended pregnancies. And a University of Michigan study analyzed what happened when the 2005 Federal Deficit Reduction Act led to a sharp increase in the price of birth-control pills at college health centers. It found that there were statistically significant decreases in both the frequency of sexual intercourse and the number of sex partners. The unintended-pregnancy rate remained about the same.

In short, he writes that "Planned Parenthood’s aggressive promotion of contraception has led to a culture of sexual promiscuity and high rates of both unintended pregnancies and abortions."

Hilariously, the WaPo even ran another piece titled "Defunding Planned Parenthood would increase abortions." I guess they figure if they say it over and over you might start believing it.

And it's not just the Times and the WaPo doubling down on stupid (though they do it so well), this meme is everywhere.

Vox wondered "Would defunding Planned Parenthood increase abortions?" Spoiler Alert: They know so.

The HuffPo ran a piece titled "Mike Huckabee, You Want Abortion to Go Away? Then Let's Work Together -- Here's How." And, as you might guess, funding Planned Parenthood features prominently because they argue "free birth control reduces abortion."

The St. Louis Post Dispatch published an editorial titled "Birth control, sex education prevent abortions better than gotcha videos." (Never mind that it's the actions of those in the "gotcha" video that horrify us. We're just supposed to fund them anyway.)

You've got to give the media credit for taking orders so well and following through without shame. So we're supposed to believe that Planned Parenthood, whose employees we've seen haggling over the price of baby parts, are working to reduce abortions, which make them money. Yeah, that makes sense.

Even newer hot meme: Media working hard to save American's eyesight by making them turn off their televisions and throwing away their newspapers.