Dear Editor:
After I wrote Congress about my support for Planned Parenthood, Rep. Luetkemeyer sent a response laden with lies. Senator Blunt sent his Oh Holy Life mantra. Are they so intellectually challenged that they have swallowed propaganda whole? The alternative, that they repeat falsehoods to manipulate voters, is repulsive. Jay Barnes' and Mike Kehoe's failure to separate themselves from such opportunistic drivel is equally distasteful.
To correct the common lies:
Some Planned Parenthood affiliates (though not in Missouri) have programs for women who want to donate aborted fetal tissue to leading research institutions that will use it to help find treatment and cures for diseases and fetal anomalies. These programs are just like those of any other high-quality healthcare provider: They are ethical and follow all laws. Furthermore, patients consent fully by reading, understanding, and signing a legal document; and nobody benefits financially. This has been proven over and over by various state legislatures, a grand jury, a federal judge, a state attorney general, and the three congressional committees that finally abandoned the effort to find any wrong-doing. Their mission had been accomplished by slinging mud all over Planned Parenthood, for many of you reading this right now still clutch onto the lies.
Luetkemeyer spouts outlandish statistics designed to elicit an emotional reaction but cannot provide his sources, for his claims are false. Planned Parenthood provides health screenings in medically underserved areas for lower prices than other providers. Reimbursement for Medicaid-eligible services is the only federal funding they receive.
Everyone deserves affordable quality healthcare and the right to plan our families and futures, protect our own bodies, and cherish our lives. The women I know want to survive complicated pregnancies and live to raise the children they already have. Human sacrifice is so Old Testament, and legislators' willingness to throw women and children out of lifeboats reveals the callous phoniness of their so-called morality. It is unchivalrous and cowardly to say, "Let women and children suffer while I look out for myself, the corporate interests that keep me afloat, and other greedy men of wealth." Their expectation that women willingly march to our own deaths to prove allegiance to their warped self-righteousness is particularly galling.
The belligerent refusal of our quartet of legislators to acknowledge and appreciate that women are full human beings: assets to country, community, and family, rather than disposable baby-making machines, is abhorrently offensive.
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