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On the eve of Super Tuesday, more on Trump and abortion

Feb 29, 2016

By Dave Andrusko

Donald Trump

Donald Trump

Tomorrow is “Super Tuesday,” the biggest voting day to date, in which voters in twelve states (and American Samoa) will choose between Donald Trump, Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. John Kasich, and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, on the Republican side, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, on the Democratic side.

Tuesday’s fireworks will be followed March 15 by large primaries in such states as Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and Missouri.

As NRL News Today noted, last Thursday’s Republican debate not only featured passionate exchanges between Mr. Trump and Sen. Rubio and Sen. Cruz, it also featured more abortion-related comments from Trump.

Here’s one. Trump misrepresented the position of then Judge, now Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito in a case that involved a 1997 law passed by New Jersey banning partial-birth abortions. Alito, then a member of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, did not join in the opinion written by his colleague, Maryanne Trump Barry, Mr. Trump’s sister, as was suggested.

Alito specifically wrote that Judge Barry’s opinion “was never necessary and is now obsolete,” adding, “That opinion fails to discuss the one authority that dictates the result in this appeal, namely, the Supreme Court’s decision in Stenberg v. Carhart.”

This was a reference to a decision in which the High Court overturned Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion. Later, after being confirmed to the Supreme Court, Justice Alito voted to uphold the federal ban on partial-birth abortion.

Then there was Planned Parenthood. In response to a question by talk show host Hugh Hewitt about Supreme Court appointments and the issue of religious liberty, Sen. Rubio criticized Mr. Trump, including the assertion that “In fact, very recently, he was still defending Planned Parenthood.”

Trump responded

As far as Planned Parenthood is concerned, I’m pro-life. I’m totally against abortion, having to do with Planned Parenthood. But millions and millions of women — cervical cancer, breast cancer — are helped by Planned Parenthood.

So you can say whatever you want, but they have millions of women going through Planned Parenthood that are helped greatly. And I wouldn’t fund it.

I would defund it because of the abortion factor, which they say is 3 percent. I don’t know what percentage it is. They say it’s 3 percent. But I would defund it, because I’m pro-life. But millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood.

The previous Sunday on Meet the Press, Trump told moderator Chuck Todd that he would defund Planned Parenthood but that

Look, I understand that I have many, many friends who are women who understand Planned Parenthood better than you or I will ever understand it. … Planned Parenthood does a really good job at a lot of different areas. … But I would defund as long as they’re doing abortions.

Mr. Trump continues to state in debates and on news programs that abortion is 3% (or 4%) of Planned Parenthood’s business.

But as NRLC’s Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon has documented many times over the years, this is a gross misrepresentation of the role that abortion plays at PPFA, a conclusion recently backed up by Michelle Ye Yee, a Washington Post’s Fact checker.

As Dr. O’Bannon has explained, the nub of the distortion is that Planned Parenthood has a convoluted way of making it seem that its abortion “services” represent only a miniscule percentage of the “health services” it provides (the aforementioned 3%). That and its unwillingness to provide a detailed breakdown of its “clients, referrals and sources of revenues.”

Yee goes through a series of steps to reach this conclusion (which Dr. O’Bannon has documented in even greater detail). She wrote

The 3 percent figure that Planned Parenthood uses is misleading, comparing abortion services to every other service that it provides. The organization treats each service — pregnancy test, STD test, abortion, birth control — equally. Yet there are obvious difference between a surgical (or even medical) abortion, and offering a urine (or even blood) pregnancy test. These services are not all comparable in how much they cost or how extensive the service or procedure is.

You can document just how pervasive abortion is at PPFA by simply looking at their own records. In a February 2011, factsheet entitled “Planned Parenthood by the Numbers,” PPFA repeats the claim that 3% of its “health services” are abortions.

But it also admits that the percentage of its clients receiving “abortion services” is actually 12%. That means that not one in every 33 women, but nearly one out of every eight women walking through the door of a Planned Parenthood clinic has an abortion.

And this is distinct from the question (which we will save for another time) of how much money PPFA takes in performing abortions–but it is a princely sum.

So, if it should come up again, no, Justice Alito did not join in an opinion overturning New Jersey’s ban on partial-birth abortion, and, no, abortion does not make up a mere 3% of PPFAs “health services.”

Categories: Politics