Figuratively, of course.
But it’s kind of fitting, isn’t it? Planned Parenthood’s abortion providers dismember unborn babies. And that’s precisely the solution to the current debate about Planned Parenthood.
Wesley J Smith proposed this back in July, so this isn’t truly an original idea here, but his suggestion never got any traction, so it bears repeating:
Planned Parenthood should be broken up into discrete pieces in the same way ATT was once dismembered. The new organization could be strictly prohibited from providing abortion services with a wall of separation between old and new with regard to finances, leadership, etc. That new entity would still be eligible for funding.
The existing organization could continue aborting without our dollars. I am sure it would be bounteously funded from those of a certain ideological persuasion.
This makes a tremendous amount of sense to me. Heck, the existing organization could be the one providing contraception and STD testing and could still be called Planned Parenthood, and the new organization could call itself, oh, I don’t know, Abortion Services, Inc. I suppose the new organization could even be a non-profit, in the same way as most hospitals are non-profit, though if there is ever reform that demands that non-profits be required to do truly charitable things with their profits, they’d be swept up in that reform just as much as “non-profit” hospitals who use their profits for regular building expansions rather than to provide healthcare for the needy.
How far should the Wall of Separation go? Would Planned Parenthood be allowed to permit an abortion provider to use its space on a periodic basis? Maybe, I suppose, in the same way as other doctors share office space while maintaining separate practices financially, in terms of personnel, scheduling, etc. And certainly the fees paid should be market-rate, rather than the abortion-providing entity receiving a hefty discount, and Planned Parenthood should be required to treat them as a genuinely separate entity, rather than an affiliate or a preferred provider.
Jeb Bush brought up the Reagan Rule in the September 16 CNN debate, and I did a little digging on this. According to the linked article, the policy
prohibited Title X projects “from engaging in counseling concerning, referrals for, and activities advocating abortion as a method of family planning, and require[d] such projects to maintain an objective integrity and independence from the prohibited abortion activities by the use of separate facilities, personnel, and accounting records.”
But the rule was promulgated in 1988, and immediately challenged. But the time the court challenges were completed and the rule was upheld, Clinton was in office, and immediately rescinded it, so we’ve never seen it in action.
Was this intended, in fact, to require that Title X providers wholly separate themselves from the abortion service component of their businesses? It doesn’t look like it went that far, but a break-up of Planned Parenthood (and also of similar family planning funding recipients who simultaneously provide abortions) would be, functionally, the only real way to implement this, and would certainly be more likely to succeed than a bill targeting Planned Parenthood by name specifically.
Now, is “dismember Planned Parenthood” — or “dismantle them” or “break them up” — an inspiring rallying cry? Does it satisfy our desire to punish Cecile Richards and the others in the top leadership? Not really, and I haven’t got a clever hashtag to offer. #We’reOKwithContraceptionandCheckupsButSpinOffYourAbortionBusiness don’t really seem to do the trick. But it’s a practical approach that has at least a non-zero chance of succeeding.
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