Seven Texas Planned Parenthoods to close due to state budget cuts
According to the TRL [Texas Right to Life] blog (and confirmed by Planned Parenthood), seven North Texas Planned Parenthood locations, including sites in Arlington and Plano, are set to close by the end of September due to the budget cuts, while more independent family planning clinics plan to close their doors in the months to come.
The Republican-dominated Legislature cut about $74 million from the $111 million administered by the state’s Department of State Health Services, leaving roughly $38 million in the pool. Governor and GOP presidential hopeful Rick Perry signed the measure into law during a July ceremony.
~ Pro-abortion news outlet The American Independent, August 26

Sounds like a Tea Party side effect.
To those of you in Hurricane Irene’s path — stay safe and dry!
Praise God!!!
And a continued Merry Planned Parenthood defunding into the 2011 holiday season. Wishing them more closures and a continued defunding throughout the rest of this year and into 2012.
Do you think there would be any change in the abortion rate if all planned parenthood clinics closed? They provide service for the demand, they don’t create the demand. (hals’s weekend question)
Planned Parenthood works to create the demand for abortion by selling birth control as more effective than it really is.
This causes undue reliance upon those methods, and brings in abortion business when they fail.
The closure of any planned parenthood is good news.
Hal,
There will absolutely be a decrease in abortions when planned parenthoods are all shut down. Any successful business is able to increase market share through a variety of means. Just as sales of music players overall would decrease if Apple were to go under, so to would abortions decreae if the lead player were no longer in business.
“Do you think there would be any change in the abortion rate if all planned parenthood clinics closed? They provide service for the demand, they don’t create the demand.”
There is an unstated premise here, that abortion demand is inelastic, it isn’t. Demand for abortion is actually quite sensitive. Studies have already shown that demand drops quickly as the price goes up. Also, demand falls as availability of contraception falls. No, that isn’t a typo. Restrictions of all kinds have measurably reduced demand. Of course the biggest demand killer is legal prohibition. Just like 15 year olds don’t order a beer when they go to Applebee’s because they know it is illegal, the vast majority of people really do follow the laws. Pressuring your girlfriend to get an abortion for free because she is on Medicaid is wholly different from pressuring her to do it, when all the doctors say, no because it ain’t worth losing their livelihood for $1k.
Hal says:
“Do you think there would be any change in the abortion rate if all planned parenthood clinics closed? They provide service for the demand, they don’t create the demand. (hals’s weekend question)”
It’s a really good question, Hal. First, let me stipulate to everything Hippie has stated. There is much truth in that response. Back to your question, Hal…
Hippie has hit on some of the variables inherent in your question. Still others would include how many of the independent chop shops would continue to operate, or even flourish. More still would be the percentage of abortion mills PP represents in a geographic locale. Still, it seems that there needs to be a reduction to a critical threshold where, as Hippie states, the price becomes too high (transportation and increased cost).
Now, Hal, let’s be honest here. When you say they don’t create the demand, you know that’s not entirely true. As Carla and her many, many, many post-abortive sisters will tell you most enter these abortuaries in a panic, not realizing the resources available to them. These women will also tell you that the clinic staff lie through their teeth about the human identity and developmental status of the well-formed baby within them (the “clump of cells” canard). These women will also testify that nobody at the abortuary ever helped lay out all of their options (social services, community support from pro-lifers, adoption, etc.).
So, technically, you are correct in saying that they do not create the demand. However, the empiric evidence from the testimonials of thousands of women indicates that while they do not create the demand, they generate the business through deception and coercion. Hence PP and NARAL’s hatred for CPC’s.
Well – Planned parenthood does create a demand. At least at our local pp – I have talked to many young girls, put on the pill. Many have told me that PP did not tell them that certain anti-biotics render the pill ineffective. The young women have no real idea how those pill work – and when they look at the medical insert, they are surprised at what it says – especially the vast risks with use. PP also knows that it is likely that these young women will forget a pill or two, and voila – they need the ‘next service.’
And just this last week, we had a woman who was a nurse-midwife come in to try to arrange a residency program with our local PP. She was shocked that PP ended their pre-natal care for women and their children in January 2009. No residency, since they do not service pregnant women except with a pregnancy test and abortion.
Where is PP’s emphasis? on getting people sexually active – and being there for all services (except mostly pre-natal care), including abortion. Money, money money. Especially off of women who may have more abortions than they have children. so unfortunate.
Do you think there would be a change in the abortion rate if all planned parenthood clinics closed? They provide services for the demand, they don’t create the demand.
There lies create a climate where pressure on women to kill their young is no longer seen as something that is bad. The climate they create ensures that more women will feel pressured to abort and will also face direct pressure from others to abort. Because of their influence society is often left with two victims. The unborn child and his/her mom. I’m just hoping the money that will no longer go to them will go to organizations that help women.
Do you think there would be a change in the abortion rate if all planned parenthood clinics closed? They provide services for the demand, they don’t create the demand
Hal
Their lies create a climate where pressure on women to kill their unborn is no longer seen as something that is bad. The climate they create ensures that more women will feel pressured to abort and will also face direct pressure from others to abort. Because of their influence society is often left with two victims. The unborn child and his or her mom. I’m just hoping the money that will no longer go to them will go to organizations that help women.
Hal,
The same question could be asked of any whore house.
Pimps and prositutes do not create the demand, but shutting down their flesh peddling would be a boon to any communtiy.
But unlike pimps and prostitutes, pp does create a demand for abortions by promoting activities and products that lead to increased infections, pregancies and abortions.
Unlike the pimp and the prostitute, pp profits more from the failure of their porposed solutions to the ‘problem’ than they do from their successes.
Follow the money.
It is always about the money.
Thank you all for addressing my weekend question. As Carla and I have discussed before, I have not known women who have obtained abortions when they really didn’t want to. The ones I know really, really wanted an abortion. Planned Parenthood didn’t talk them into it, or lie to get them to do it. In fact, only one that i know of even went to Planned Parenthood for an abortion (and she had a terrible experience there).
Anyway, the sun is shining and I’m going outside. Have a nice evening everyone.
I am not crazy about PP but where will men and women who want contraceptives and can’t afford them go if independent family planning clinics are also shut?
I know I differ from many on this board because I believe safe, non-abortifacient contraceptives should be available to anyone who wants them, including minors.
Do you think there would be any change in the abortion rate if all planned parenthood clinics closed? They provide service for the demand, they don’t create the demand. (hals’s weekend question)
I think Hippie is correct, that the demand is somewhat elastic. And while it’s granted that not all the Birth Control measures that PP provides will work 100% of the time, nor that people will use them 100% correctly, there is the lessened supply of Birth Control now that PP is hypothetically closed. Beyond the rhetoric, I don’t think we can really say what would happen.
Hippie: demand falls as availability of contraception falls.
Is that really true, though? Has this happened in enough places to have a meaningful study of it? Looking into the past, when there was less contraception available, is not the same thing, nor necessarily accurate if projected into the future. There’s no “putting the genie” back into the bottle once contraception has been widely available in a society, and once fertility rates and mortality rates have fallen.
Hal,
While I agree with what others have written, I don’t think the goal of defunding PP is necessarily aimed at the demand or directly reducing the abortion rate (though of course, that is desired). If the demand and market are there, other abortion providers will pop up to fill the void. What makes PP different from your average abortion chop shop is the fact that they have so successfully buried their abortion services within their “women’s health care provider” package. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to during the defunding debates who are completely surprised to hear that PP actually does abortions (as opposed to referring for them). Yes, the nations #1 abortion provider (the WalMart of abortion providers) has managed to brand themselves in a way that has people surprised they actually commit the deed. And this branding gives them an air of legitimacy that other ‘full service women’s health providers’, aka abortionists, could not hope to have. That legitimacy paves the way for their political clout and resulting access to taxpayer funding which subsidizes their real money maker. Defunding is aimed at breaking this cycle and forcing them to operate in the market.
Phillymiss,
I do disagree with you on contraception as well as the obligation of the taxpayer to pay for people’s protection from completely voluntary behavior. However, for pro-lifers who feel passionately about this issue, I would think you’d support the redirection of family planning funds to the hundreds of existing community health providers who do not provide abortions. Then we’d see just how committed PP is to their supposed main goal of providing non-abortion services.
Hal, you need to watch Blood Money and learn the tricks of the trade.
Hi Hal,
You still don’t believe it’s just little ol me out here all alone do you?? :)
The distant thunder.
Phillymiss,
It is one of the great ironies that as more and more people believe that sexual activity is a completely private behavior, with no sense of accountability to the community for their conduct or its consequences, more and more people are demanding that the public finance their behavior by purchasing their contraceptives.
You and I have a significant disagreement on this issue, and it has nothing to do with a faith-based understanding of the morality of contraception.
Teenagers should not have free and ready access to contraception because they are not prepared for the consequences of sexual activity. They are not, as a group, capable of consistent and correct use of contraception which, under ideal circumstances, leaves them open to pregnancy to varying degrees and to sexually transmitted diseases (1:4 overall for girls by age 19, 1:2 for black girls by age 19).
It is a life-threatening, life-altering behavior for teens. Free and ready access to contraceptives drives a wedge between the child and their parents/guardians regarding oversight, and is predicated on the lie that they’re out-of-control bags of hormones who will inevitably “do it”.
When I was a teen, boys lived in fear of a girl’s father, and for good reason. It was an age when men would wipe the floor with a guy who presumed to diddle their daughter. What has changed isn’t kids. It’s us.
Either way, I would rather save that tax money and invest it in my children’s education and not in someone else’s children’s destruction.
CT and Gerard: I understand and respect your views. I actually do think that young people should wait until marriage to be sexually active or at least in a committed relationship. I do believe in abstinence. In the best of all possible worlds this would be the case. But young people are deluged daily with sexual messages, in music, movies, commercials, books, and so on. Did you ever watch videos on MTV? Shocking, and I’m not a prude.
No “pregnancy scares” or worries about STI’s. But despite our best efforts, many young people are going to be sexually active no matter what we say. It disappoints me, but I would rather see a young person use contraceptives than be faced with an unplanned pregnancy and abort.
When I was a teen, boys lived in fear of a girl’s father, and for good reason. It was an age when men would wipe the floor with a guy who presumed to diddle their daughter. What has changed isn’t kids. It’s us.
This is true. I went to a Catholic school in the seventies. There were rumors that one girl had gotten pregnant and had an abortion (this was in New York State, which has always been abortion tolerant) but most of us were NOT sexually active, In fact, even the rumor that a girl had “done it” was enough to have her ostracized. How things have changed! And change is not always good.
obamacare: call us when you’re shovel ready
Distant thunder! Our numbers grow, our voice of experience will be heard.
Planned Parenthood is more than abortions, Planned Parenthood is about sabotaging the relationship between parents and their teens; it is about promoting sexual license, causing duped participants to get STDs and then offering “healthcare” to manage the symptoms.
Anyone who “stands with” Planned Parenthood is either a fool or a pervert. It is hard to have any respect for people who refuse to see truth. Sorry if my remarks offend but I don’t like what they are doing to our young people.