# You almost got distracted from Trump abolishing funding to Planned Parenthood today, didn't you? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 23, 2017, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970 "2017-01-23T20:41:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/21 "2017-01-24T00:33:24Z")
> [@Mr.Duality](#): > > **Thelma:** The “idiots” are the white people who voted for it. That would be the Texas Legislature. And I agree. They’re the same ones who turned down the Medicaid expansion just to spite Obama. They won’t be satisfied until Texas is officially a third world [del] country [/del] state. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/22 "2017-01-24T00:45:00Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Whenever Planned Parenthood says, “But abortion is only 3% of the services we provide”, it seems to be an implicit admission that abortion is, somehow, a bad or wrong thing. > If someone threatened to cut funding to a hospital, saying, “They perform appendectomies!” you wouldn’t expect the hospital to reply, “But appendectomies account for only 3 percent of our services.” You’d expect them to reply, “Why is performing appendectomies a bad thing?” Because nobody can give a reason why appendectomies are a bad thing, but some sizable minority of American can explain their opinion why abortions are bad, and some larger percentage of Americans probably think that Planned Parenthood is simply the place you go for abortions, and another sizable chunk that may be squishy pro-choice but don’t want taxpayer dollars used for those procedures. So, there’s many reasons that nobody gives your proposed answer. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/23 "2017-01-24T03:11:50Z")
> [@purplehearingaid](#): > > Maastricht No you got distracted by Trump b/c once funds are cut from Planned Parenthood there are going to more women on welfare and food stamps and WIC ! Guess who pays for that !! Planned Parenthood help people plan their families and this is being responsible parents . In fact, it costs $420,000 to raise an American child from birth to the age of 18. Guess who will pay for that, in families that want abortions because they can’t afford additional children and re already on social assistance. A million abortions will reduce the cost of raising those children by almost a half a trillion dollars. Let’s ask all the Trump supporters to sign a pledge, to adopt and raise a child whose parents would have opted for an abortion. See how many sign up. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 9:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/24 "2017-01-24T09:37:17Z")
There was nothing to be distracted from. Everyone who cares about the Mexico City Policy already knew it had been reinstated. It was clear by the early morning of November 9th. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/25 "2017-01-24T10:54:00Z")
How much discretion does Trump have to defund PP or at least federal funds in the US? I mean through executive order without doing something extreme like declaring them a terrorist organization? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/26 "2017-01-24T12:57:23Z")
> [@Mr.Duality](#): > > More cheaper labor, more desperately poor children to provide services for sex tourists. More dead women. One effect of the Mexico City policy is that hospitals that depend on American funding [refuse pregnant women any medical care whatsoever](https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/schools/law/lawreviews/journals/bctwj/24_1/10_TXT.htm), since if she has a miscarriage we’ll accuse them of abortion and defund them. So to protect the rest of their patients they have to sacrifice the lives of pregnant women. > [@](#): > > Because the conditions satisfying this scenario are so limited, USAID-funded clinics fear risking their budgets by providing any responses whatsoever and are often forced to turn women away.53 USAID repre[\*PG197]sentatives strictly enforce the Policy, and organizations such as International Planned Parenthood Federation have lost up to $12 million in USAID grants for noncompliance.54 > > These exceptions are virtually meaningless in practice: the Policy has a chilling effect that deters USAID-funded clinics from treating women even in emergency situations for fear of losing funding.55 At a congressional hearing in 2001, New York Congresswoman Nita Lowey recounted the story of a nurse in Egypt who was afraid to treat or refer a woman bleeding from a botched abortion due to the possible negative consequences from the Mexico City Policy. ---
**Author:** ![Doug\_K](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5ac83/32.png) [@Doug\_K](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doug_K)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/27 "2017-01-24T13:15:56Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > In fact, it costs $420,000 to raise an American child from birth to the age of 18. Guess who will pay for that, in families that want abortions because they can’t afford additional children and re already on social assistance. A million abortions will reduce the cost of raising those children by almost a half a trillion dollars. > > Let’s ask all the Trump supporters to sign a pledge, to adopt and raise a child whose parents would have opted for an abortion. See how many sign up. If that were true there’s no way we could have raised our two children to 18. That would be over 3/4 million on top of what it already cost for the two of us to live. We would have starved. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/28 "2017-01-24T13:41:50Z")
> [@jtur88](#): > > In fact, it costs $420,000 to raise an American child from birth to the age of 18. > [@Doug\_K](#): > > If that were true there’s no way we could have raised our two children to 18. That would be over 3/4 million on top of what it already cost for the two of us to live. We would have starved. That’s nearly twice as much money as [a figure released this month](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cost-of-raising-child_us_587474f2e4b02b5f858adf27) says: $233,610. 30% of the cost is figured on increased housing costs, which obviously have a lot of variance between buying a seven bedroom house instead of a one bedroom so all six kids have their own room, buying a two bedroom home and having your children share a room, or inheriting a house or already having bought a house with adequate bedrooms before there are kids. Another 15% is transportation costs (over and above the cost of the parents’ transportation costs) which also has a huge range given some people live in walkable cities and others don’t really run their kids around places they wouldn’t have gone otherwise beyond doctors visits, daycare the first few years and bringing the kids to school when they miss their free bus in the morning. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/29 "2017-01-24T13:49:11Z")
To inject reality into this thread: Trump did not “abolish funding to Planned Parenthood”. It’s questionable that he could use an executive order to do so, even in this age of rule-by-executive-order. Congress could pass legislation prohibiting use of [Medicaid and Title X funding](https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/blog/how-federal-funding-works-at-planned-parenthood) for Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion services (federal funding for abortions is already prohibited). ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/30 "2017-01-24T16:25:07Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > SOP for a Republican president. Any of the other guys would have done the same, so just to be clear, this isn’t Trump acting out in an unprecedented way. Yep. NPR did a great job reporting this by stating that; basically, “hey, Trump did this, and it’s a back and forth that we can expect every time the party in the Executive office switches; nothing surprising or out-of-the-ordinary.” The “distraction” here is actually being so heightened and paranoid about Trump (which I have a lot of sympathy/understanding about, btw), that every time he blinks people go into a tizzy about how awful it is, and then about how awful the other thing that happened while we were freaking out about the first thing that happened was and NO ONE WAS PAYING ATTENTION!!! Trump is, IMHO, obviously the worst leader this country has had in my lifetime, but we’d all do ourselves a favor if we dialed back the panic a bit, and at least tried to separate our “REPUBLICANS ARE KILLING US ALL” rhetoric from our “TRUMP IS EVEN THE WORST EVAR” rhetoric. Again, I even tend to agree with the core of those thoughts, but folks are so eager to jump the gun at the moment that we’re jumping at our own shadows. ---
**Author:** ![Iggy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iggy/32/3364_2.png) [@Iggy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iggy)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2017, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970/31 "2017-01-24T18:32:45Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > How much discretion does Trump have to defund PP or at least federal funds in the US? I mean through executive order without doing something extreme like declaring them a terrorist organization? The Executive branch can prioritze spending when Congress allocates an insufficient amount to accomplish the stated task. But if Congress allocates the money and specifies the recipient then the Anti Impoundment Act prevents the Executive from refusing to spend the allocated funds. So it would depend upon the wording of a funding resolution. Assume a hypothetical in which the [Hyde Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_Amendment) generally barring use of federal funds for abortions where the life of the mother is not at stake is not in place. If Congress authorized $100 million for “family planning or abortion services at public health clinics” and the Executive could spend that entire sum without funding abortion services then the Executive branch could make that call and prioritize counseling and other forms of birth control but exclude abortion. If instead Congress appropriated $100 million for “abortion services for qualified individuals on Medicaid” then the Executive would be bound to spend the money on those services, up to the limit of budgeted funds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-almost-got-distracted-from-trump-abolishing-funding-to-planned-parenthood-today-didnt-you/777970.md?page=1)