A Closer Look?

Today’s political conversation is so superficial and myopic as to be almost stupid. For example, tonight, I watched Tucker Carlson discuss Rudy Giuliani’s position on abortion and how it relates to his donation to Planned Parenthood.
Tucker insisted that Giuliani’s position was so contradictory as to be nonsensical. However, just a little more analysis shows that the position is not as inconsistent as it may first appear on its face.

At the republican candidate debate, when asked about his position on abortion, Giuliani said that he hated abortion and that he wished there were no abortions. Tucker, I call him Tucker because I kind of like the guy, says Giuliani's position makes no sense because Giuliani donates to Planned Parenthood, and that Planned Parenthood is behind so many abortions in this country. Tucker went on to say that if you’re against abortion and if you believe abortion is killing, how can you be okay with abortion and donate to Planned Parenthood.

Tucker suffers from what many people on the right and left suffer from, intellectual myopia. They see one thing, in this case abortion and Giuliani’s position on abortion, and assume that a straight line analysis automatically gets you to a particular point, in this case, a rejection of Planned Parenthood.

What Tucker ignores is the fact that Planned Parenthood prevents far more abortions than it provides. The core of Planned Parenthood and its medical service is providing information about contraception, accompanying health care, education, and information. The service provides educational programs in 28 different content areas, such as AIDS/HIV, contraception/family planning - including abstinence, family life education, parent-child communication, puberty education, safer sex, sexuality education, sexually transmitted infections, teenage pregnancy, and women’s health. In addition, Planned Parenthood advocates for new policies at the federal and state levels that will advance comprehensive reproductive health care and responsible decision making. According to its website, in 2005, abortion accounted for only 3 percent of its services.

When you look a little deeper, for a person struggling with the difficult and complex issue of abortion, Planned Parenthood is just the kind of agency to support . Last week we heard over and over again about Reagan’s philosophy about when you’re with me only 80 percent of the time doesn’t mean you’re my enemy 20 percent of the time. Here we have better numbers. Planned Parenthood is Giuliani’s friend 97 percent of the time when it comes to abortion. It’s tough to get better numbers than that. Why can’t some people see that? http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/08/giuliani.abortion/