It was inevitable that Fox host Bill O’Reilly would weigh in on the Planned Parenthood/Komen Foundation controversy. And perhaps just as inevitable that he’d mangle the facts along the way.
Here he is, on Friday night (2/3/12):
Last year the Komen Foundation gave Planned Parenthood $680,000. Now, that is the source of controversy because as you know, Planned Parenthood is primarily in business to provide abortions, more than 300,000 each year.
Later he added:
Planned Parenthood does not give women who visit its clinics the other side of the abortion story because again PP is in business for abortion.
Here is Planned Parenthood’s breakdown of medical services (h/t Ezra Klein):
O’Reilly was fortunate enough to book an opposing guest–talk radio host Leslie Marshall–who wasn’t prepared to argue this point:
O’REILLY: OK their big business, Planned Parenthood is abortion. And lobbying for abortion, would you concede that?
MARSHALL: I would concede that they perform abortions and they are politically —
(CROSSTALK)
O’REILLY: No the largest part of their business, the most things that they get involved in concerns abortion, would you concede that.
MARSHALL: I can’t because I’ve heard a good argument on both sides and information on both sides.
(CROSSTALK)
O’REILLY: OK, well, all right, there is no good argument. The absolute truth is PP is in business for abortion; 300,000 a year and they make tons of money from it.
There is no shame in ignorance when it is glorified with its own place of prominence in the corporate media.
The truth, after all, is cheap; it is the well crafted lie that is worth millions.
Yes, ‘Glenn Says’ is right – – – in our economic system you have to pay people a LOT of money and give them a lot of faux honors to tell unconscionable lies, like so many of these right-wing talk show hosts, notably the $10M and $20M contracts that O’Reilly, Limbaugh, and their ilk get paid. I think somewhere WAY down in the pit of their hearts, they have a tinge of remorse for what they’re doing, as it comes out slightly when they throw out that ever-exculpatory line about ‘Oh, this is just entertainment’. But they’re quickly able to rationalize it away because of all the money they’re making and the fame they’re gaining for being flamboyant liars. Political truth-tellers seldom make much money, have much lasting accolades, and (as whistleblowers know) it can actually cost them dearly.
I’m still amazed that people actually listen to these right-wing squawk radio/TV shows! What’s the attraction of hearing some irate guy talking BS off the top of his head? You can go down to the corner bar and hear the loud drunk at the end of the bar bloviating the same way. Ultimately, the human race doesn’t necessarily do a lot of reasoning – – – we kind of react habitually to a lot of things – – – but the few moments of enlightenment DON’T appear when people are engaged in loud tirades.
How does Fox always find the most stupid, uninformed liberal to reply to their garbage? I seldom watch Faux Nooz, but when I do the “liberal” commentator is always an idiot.
I would suggest you call what O’Reilly does “lies” rather than mangling the facts. With his research department it would have been difficult for him to find the chart above. Therefore, what he does is lie.
The bottom line, although never mentioned, is that pro-lifers believe in male domination of women.
Mary Says is spot on. The anti-aborton movement has been nurtured and led by the biggest women haters in the world. Maybe it would be more correct to identify them as the spokespersons for the ancient tradition of patriarchy that has forever fought to control sexual expression. The Taliban still stones free-thinking women, and Bil O’Reilly isn’t far behind.
O’Reilly is all over PP with lies about abortion services but supports war with Iran. Doesn’t war stop beating hearts, too?
I’m waiting for Republicans to pass legislation that controls a man’s reproductive system.
Actually, PP does perform 300,000 abortions per year. 90% of all pregant women who enter a PP office end up aborting thier child. So much for offering a range of viable options for women dealing with unplanned pregnancies. If I have 100 customers a day at my store, and 3% of those visits result in someone dying, then I imagine one can truthfully state that a relatively small percent of my business results in fatalities. Still, don’t you think it would be considered a fairly signficant 3%?
PP treats millions of men and women a year and those millions are not there for abortions. Are you anti-war, too? Wars result in “someone dying” as well.
No, I don’t consider 3% to be significant when 97% are not there for abortions.
Actually, Ellen, Leslie Marshall has her own talk show, which airs in Chicago at 8;00 pm on WCPT. She often mentions that she’s a regular guest on O’Reilly’s show. She’s sort of a middle of the road liberal, who is on Roger Aile’s payroll, so I’m sure she’s just doing her Allan Colmes impersonation. O’reilly should try someone like Norman Goldman; he’s on the radio right before Marshall, and could run circles around a dummy like O’Reilly–which is why the uninformed Marshall has a regular gig on Fox. How about the classic remark–” . . . I’ve heard a good argument on both sides and information on both sides.” Both sides? The first instinct is to cover for the Yahoos and the liars on the right, like O”Reilly. You know what Marshall’s tag line is on the radio? “Strong opinions from a strong woman.”
Yo, Allan–a fetus is not a child, numbnuts. Three percent of what PP does are abortions. That’s pretty straight-forward, no? If a woman seeking an abortion (90%–wow!) at planned Parenthood gets an abortion, that’s called “getting an abortion,” which is what a woman seeking an abortion is trying to do. That’s pretty straight-forward too. You’re trying to make it seem like the folks at PP are persuading women to choose abortion. You’re deliberately lying about what PP does, and how much of it they do. I’m guessing you neither know nor care what kind of turmoil a woman might experience with an unwanted pregnancy, and you probably have no idea what PP says or how it counsels women who go there. See John Boy’s post above for further instructions.
Sometimes, things start out with the best intentions, and then….I guess they just turn into something else. Wow, Susan G. Komen was a real person, and I did have to look that up. I wondered if she would turn out to be a Betty Crocker made up person. She was an actual actually died of breast cancer in 1982 and her younger sister, the CEO, did all this work in the organization in her sister’s name. I wonder what Susan G, would have done if she had a say? Too late for that, I guess. That name is tainted now and so is that organization, because it didn’t seem to be for women at all, but it did raise a lot of funds! .
On the other hand Planned Parenthood is a great name, because you know exactly what that organization does… it gives people a choice of PLANS for when to become or how to become a Parent. I wish people would think about that, because there are way too many children that have NO housing, food, medical or even “love”in the world. Forcing a woman to have a child that she can’t care for is so cruel and unnecessary. I wish that the anti- choice people would spend their time and energy on raising funds for housing and caring for the unwanted babies; that makes more sense. Although, sex EDUCATION makes the most sense of all.
PP spends time trying to teach and dispense birth control so that women can avoid unwanted pregnancies, thereby reducing the need to ever have an abortion. Republicans want to defund birth control (as well as PP), thereby increasing the chances of women (especially poor women) having a baby.
Then Republicans want to take away (or significantly reduce) the medical care and social services which this mother and child will desperately need.
The lies never stop. The right-wing media spinners has created a complete, and self-sealing parallel universe and their listeners and viewers believe everything they see and are told. For todays Republicans, life BEGINS at conception and ENDS at birth. The GOP, if anything, is the party of death. Unless you’re a billionaire or worth hundreds of millions, life should be ugly, brutal, painful, torturous, and as short as possible so you don’t take away any precious federal funds from Lockheed Martin, Blackwater (now Academi), Dyncorp, or subsides for oil companies.
You post a diagram pie chart of services render by Planned Parenthood but where is your documentation and/or evidence? Oh, let me click on (h/t Ezra Klein), what do I get? I get an article where the same information is quoted but with no reference or documentation. Is that FAIR? You attack O’Reilly for his practice of bending the truth; however, you do it under the illusion of journalism. Oh the hypocrisy!
I’d love to see someone with a laptop connected to the internet sitting next to these big-fat-liars at faux noise — fact checking them and posting the truth on the crawl.
In fact, that should be a clause in every f*cking cable contract — that the cable company must add a crawl beneath the faux noise lie machine with the actual truths; like the 2% figure for PP’s “abortion business”; to refute this crap.
What happened to taking responsibility for one’s on action….get a grip…no protection? It’s on YOU!!!
yes there are exceptions……but the rest of you — your problem!!!
C-Jean: It would only be hypocritical if it were not true and if FAIR were trying to make distortions. The sheet FAIR cites has been the commonly-accepted data since Arisona Senator John Kyl came out and made his (not intended to be factual) statement that well over 90% of what Planned Parenthood does is abortions.
These are the first three links I got when I googled “planned parenthood budget”:
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_Parenthood
Eternity Matters, an anti-abortion site accepting the Washington Post reference, but countering with other data:
http://4simpsons.wordpress.com/2012/02/09/the-holocaust-was-probably-less-than-3-of-germanys-budget-and-other-responses-to-planned-parenthood-distortions/
Planned Parenthood’s annual report, frrom which the chart is drawn:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/PPFA/PPFA_Annual_Report_08-09-FINAL-12-10-10.pdf
What an ugly subject.Planned parenthood indicates in their literature that one in 3 woman in the US will have an abortion in their lifetime.That is roughly 40 million as we now stand.If planned parenthood hopes to provide that service,lets just all stop sniping at O’reillys numbers and agree it is a lot of sadness.Forty million worth.
If you look at the breakdown on what PP makes as far as cash flow you will see that the 3% number is turned on its head.They make nothing on 35% of condom dispersal for instance.That is why I say you can play the numbers any way you want.Oreilly is close to the truth in regards to cash flow.He could/should of stated that.He left himself open to the charge that he was saying most woman who walk through the door come for abortion.That is incorrect.
Abortion…….I believe the service must ,and will remain.I am not a believer in late term in most all cases.But by the same measure we do play semantics.Tim says a fetus is not a child.Of course even the most permissive among us must agree that at SOME point it is.We use nice words like terminate the pregnancy ,instead of kill the emerging life.I believe abortion is one of those few times where both side are in a sense correct.Or at least their points well formulated and taken.I just shake my heads at sidestepping the responsibility of what it is we are doing.I heard a PP official talking the other day about how much safer abortion was than pregnancy.I kept thinking for who?The mother or the fetus?Im lucky that most all woman i see ,treasure that “fetus” from the moment life begins in them.Right till the baby opens its eyes to its first moment in loving arms.They guard that life within them.So Im saved that moral dilemma for the most part.I guess i am saying let neither side be flippant.Almost all woman who have an abortion share a moment of sadness i believe.As they say goodbye to that life within them.
The pie chart is simply a graphic representation of statistics from PP, and is accurate, so any charge of hypocrisy on the part of those using it is just another red herring. 3% is, by any definition, a very small fraction of the services that PP provides, and to say that it is the main body of work they do is not a distortion or a problem with O’Reilly’s research staff, it is simply lying.
And if you’re so worried about life and death, why don’t you look up some statistics on how many lives are saved by the cancer screenings that PP provides to women who have no other access to them? Abortion rates are down from what they have been historically. Any chance that access to contraception has anything to do with that? Why, in all the arguments against PP, are the lives of women trivialised? Why is there an implicit presumption in all those arguments that there would be no abortions if they were not legal? Does anyone out there recall the pain and death that women experienced at the hands of back-alley abortionists before legalization? Do you honestly think that wouldn’t recur if abortions were made illegal again?
Here’s a little analogy especially for all you Christians out there (I’m one, too, by the way): Please re-read Christ’s parable about The Good Samaritan, but replace the beaten man at the side of the road with a pregnant woman. Remember that Christ tells us nothing about how he got there, so the opinions of those who come upon him are what they read into his story (sound familiar?). The Pharisees (those were high Church officials) assumed that he had put himself in bad company, which resulted in his beating, so it was his fault. The next group were appalled by his condition and didn’t blame him, but couldn’t take the time to help him. The Good Samaritan took pity on him, bound his wounds, took him to a nearby house where he left money for his care with a promise to pay more on his way back if it was needed. So if this is a pregnant woman who perceives it to be a serious problem for her, what does Christ suggest we do? Condemn her and leave her to her fate? Pity her and leave her to her fate? Or are we to do everything we can to alleviate her pain and suffering, and help her get on her feet again, regardless of what it costs?
Do you hear ANYONE on the Right suggesting the last solution? Those on the left who suggest providing even minimal support for women in distress are chastised as Socialists and worse. I’ll offer one other exercise for my fellow Christians: Read the New Testament through and pay close attention to the words attributed directly to Christ. There was one epithet that he used early and often, more often than any other: “Thou Hypocrite!” Kind of makes you think that hypocrisy bothered him, doesn’t it? Apparently, if we seek righteousness, as individuals or for our nation, we had better be prepared and willing to sacrifice for it. There’s a difference between ‘forgiven’ and ‘righteous,’ and if you’ll just look at Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross, you’ll see that ‘sacrifice’ is what makes all the difference. (I’m happy to acknowledge that there are many Christian and other religious organisations out there that do, in fact, make every attempt to provide aid and support to women with problem pregnancies, so save your breath.)
So, my fellow Citizens, who among you is ready to empower the Federal Government to do whatever is necessary to support pregnant women, whether ‘sainted mothers-to-be’ or crack-whores, enough to change their perception of that pregnancy from being a problem to being a blessing? Just call your Congressman or Senator and tell him how you feel, and stop arguing where to put the tourniquet while the patient(s) bleed to death!
Wow. kcpackrat, well said!
Something else it says in the bible, “Choose life.”
I believe that I was once a fetus, and I had my own DNA. Anybody else?
Just for the record I intensly dislike bullies and liars like Bill O´Reilley and Big Em has it spot on.
Very well stated, kcpackrat.
Can we also “choose life” for the millions of Americans who die every year for lack of medical insurance coverage? Can we “choose life” for civilian victims of drone attacks? Can we also demand that we “choose life” when confronted with the next idiotic war? The only time I hear a real shout out for “choose life” is over a fetus. Then, once born, mother and baby are on their own, regardless of the circumstances. It’s “pull yourself up from your bootstraps” time.
The last woman I knew who had an abortion was a heroin addict. Knowing her lifestyle and how she abused her body, she made the right choice.
We might also remember that Planned Parenthood’s cancer screenings include prostate, so it’s not just women who will lose if PP’s services don’t continue. But, I suppose, if you’re poor and male, you deserve to die of prostate cancer….
What the Fundamentalist hard Reich want is for women to have no access to birth control or sex ed. Abstinence or nothing. So both birth rates an STDs will go up as will abortions an more deaths from illegal ones. Some have already died in states that have no Planned Parenthood or clinics to go to. Such will be their mythical world of horror. Ignorance is bliss in their way just as they are fools to think themselves smart.
While I usually don’t side with O’Reilly he’s right about one thing. Despite the misleading pie-chart, 30%+ of PP’s services are related to abortion. The pie-chart is misleading because PP identifies each of it’s services INDIVIDUALLY. So when you break it down this way it appears only 3% of PP’s services are related to abortion. In reality 30%+ of its services involve abortion.
Keep cutting PP’s funding!
It’s really ironic that the right to lifers carry on about the right of women to make a choice between one unhappy circumstance and another. Just got to let that little zygote, fetus or other manifestation of life live. How do they not realize that those unwanted lives they save are the same ones they complain about when the welfare checks go out, or a crazy mother kills the child they forced her to have. And where are the men (fathers) when these babies are forced to come to term? Too many of the deny parentage and skip out on support, going their merry way to create more babies. I say that if you don’t want abortions, then the guys who are careless about sowing their seeds should have a very serious operation so they can’t reproduce or a vasectomy, which could do the job just as well. Billy boy and his ilk, among other unattractive characteristics, are misogynists. And, Bill, if you read this, that isn’t a compliment.
Right! Let’s cut PP’s funding so we can send more women to backalley abortionists or they can try to abort themselves if desperate enough, like in the old days. Serves ’em right.
Now explain this to another person I knew who had an abortion because the fetus had a severe genetic abnormality and, even if it survived, would have been faced with a lifetime of hospital care and bills. In fact, it really would have had no life to speak of, except for a beating heart. Let’s have Tom pay the bills.
Tom, your post makes no sense and offers absolutely no evidence of your claim. PP’s records are probably audited by various agencies that provide its funding and any accreditation they have, so if they say in their PUBLIC annual report that 3% of their services are abortions, then there’s no reason not to believe them.
@Tom – what on earth are you talking about? How are you coming up with 30%?
I raised my kids, my wife kicked them out, after she kicked me out. Today she has two others with no father because she kicked him out and won´t let him have them. She has also aborted at least one other that I know of. She lip services to being a catholic.
All you women who claim that men are trash who don´t take care of their kids don´t think about people like me do you? I would have raised that other kid that she aborted, even though it wasn´t mine. A fetus is a human life. Full stop. Period.
Bill O´Reilley probably has as much blood on his hands as Donald Rumsfield. He´s the one that sold the war to the US public. What a hypocrite! Now he´s claiming to respect life.
Jorge, I, too, feel very strongly about this issue. You would have supported the kid your wife aborted but it is not a black and white issue for everyone.
The woman I mentioned who was a heroine addict already had one illegitimate child, being supported by family members because the court took the child away from her. This family spent thousands on private, professional help, trying to get her off drugs (in addition to Medicaid paying for costs–horrors!) and nothing worked. Does anyone care to lecture her about personal responsibility since even professionals couldn’t help?
When you have a family member on drugs, perhaps the biggest fear is that you will find them dead from an overdose and when the family found out that she was pregnant a second time, they persuaded her to have an abortion. Was this to be her lifestyle? On drugs with one pregnancy after the other? These children can be born with physical and mental problems and are born addicted to drugs as well and spend months in the hospital, going through withdrawal.
Today, after years and still with support, she is “clean,” but a former drug user is never free from drugs. It’s one day at a time because the desire is always there. She had tremendous family support which many don’t have.
The point I’m trying to make is that abortion is often a complex issue and not one to be made by the Republican party or religious fundmentalists who preach “let them be born” and then drop the women and her child like a hot potato. This woman needed years of help and still needs help, far into the future.
A woman should be able to have an abortion is she needs one that is in cases where her life is in danger severe health risk (she could go into a comma be made vegitable for example) where it would be more humain to terminatet the pregnency because the fetus/child is horrendously deformed and in cases of rape but only before it has a heart beat unless there was some extnenurating circumstances that prevented the woman/mother from getting to a doctor like she was held captiive. She should not be able to get one just because being pregnent would be an inconveniance for her it should NOT be used for family planning. However I believe it should be manditory for any girls gets pregnent before she is 18.75 (18years 9months)
Though it must be understood that PP is for reducing such unwanted pregnancies to zero or below 1% an even when they give abortions it is subsidized. And if they wanted to get rich they would handle the expensive an lucrative act of helping women give birth.
Yes Elaine, you are perfectly right. Women with children should be supported and treated with respect and dignity, not treated like needless expenses. You comment about a lack of healthcare is also right on. The “for profit” health care industry ot the US fails completely in this regard. As for a heroin addicted mother, if the US didn´t have the “war on drugs” and treated addicts like people with drug problems instead of criminals there probably wouldn´t be so many people addicted or needing to use prostitution to support their habit.
Michael, I don´t agree that young girls should be given abortions. Many women never forgive themselves after having abortions. It is spiritually destructive. If they are unable to support them they should be put up for adoption. There are many people who would like to adopt but there are precious few babies available for adoption. There are probably people out there who would adopt a baby that is addicted to heroin as well. Once again, the capitalist model fails to provide for young people struggling with children. There is nothing democratic about an education system that is only for the wealthy.
Jorge, we will have to agree to disagree. The woman who was faced with a fetus having a profound genetic abnormality was so distraught that I doubt she could have made it through the rest of her pregnancy. To have somehow forced her to go through with this, would have been cruel, in my opinion. We have to think of the mother, too.
Perhaps there would have been a loving family out there who would have adopted this baby, if it survived, and dealt with all the medical issues and battles with insurance companies which were sure to come. Perhaps not. Perhaps it would have gone from foster home to foster home, with some foster parents caring only about the state check they got every month and not really loving this child. It’s hard to know what the future held.
Abortion is a gray area, from my perspective. It’s not a one-size-fits-all situation. It is certainly not a decision for an outside group or political party to make.
Elaine I don’t disagree with what you just wrote.it is a grey area that probably should not have government involvement.Though abortion where the child can live outside the womb is a different subject.Above I read a lot of support for government monetary support of abortions,which is the other side of the coin.Government either stays out -or it does not.It can’t be both sides.Responsibility can not be written off because people are unfit to be parents.In turn giving that responsibility to kill a fetus to the government through tax payer funding.For the good of us all of course.Im not so sure it is good for the emerging life.Probably not.There is just something wrong with government killing the most innocent amongst us.Something truly soulless.If the choice be yours so be it.I should not have to pay for it.
“How does Fox always find the most stupid, uninformed liberal to reply to their garbage?” They intentionally have em on to make themselves look smarter than they really are. If they had an honest discussion about any topic, it would soon show that the right is full of hot air and is only preaching fear and hatred. The conservative movement is dying, and what we are hearing is simply the death throes of an anguished beast.
michael e – The “I don’t want my tax dollars going toward abortions” meme has grown old and tired. No matter how often Fox spews this lie, the government does NOT subsidize abortions, period. And it will not be true no matter how many times you (or they) repeat it.
Jorge – Oh how I wish there were more men like you around. I’ve raised grandchildren and watched an adopted daughter die of drugs and alcohol. Did the agency from which we adopted her tell us that there was alcoholism in her family? No way. Her bio-moms mom made sure that this child looked like a true all American Princess. Only later did I find out that grandpa and two uncles were dedicated alcoholics. Yes, it does run in families. Yes, it would have helped tremendously had we known. We trusted and my life has been, well, sadder, richer and more compasionate in many ways. I don’t disregard men like you – there are many.
I have also taught (or tried to teach) children that might have been better off aborted, i.e., those who were severly damaged emotionally and physically by some genetic disturbance. It’s a difficult decision to make and heart-breaking. But to chose life for a child who is severly disabled. I’ve seen them and really, they have no life. It’s very sad for all concerned.
I will still stand behind my position that women who need to have an abortion should be able to do so. Isn’t that what freedom is about?
TD I wont argue with you now about whether or not Government in one way or another subsidizes abortion.Im only throwing down the gauntlet that it never should.Let no one tread there.It is not a subject any conservative is willing to negotiate on.
Elizabeth I have been pushing hard for Santorum to clearly state his position(yes I know some of his people) in this sense.I care not one wit his belief on abortion or contraception or any other social issue.He is allowed his viewpoint.He may lead by example and God bless him if he does.I do care that he outline clearly and concisely what he would do legislatively against the status quo if he were to be president.So far I don’t think he has.He is dancing the rail.My own opinion is like that of most Americans.We need the medical procedure to be kept legal.Late term should be ended etc.I had hoped this election would avoid this but the left needs this to separate people into angry factions.It is what they do best.So they again drag this cat out.Obamas move with the church is likewise a political calculation.