PSA: Planned Parenthood Isn't Just Some Abortion Assembly Line

By now you've heard the news (and subsequent furor) over the undercover videos revealing a Planned Parenthood policy that allegedly allows it to profit off the sale of aborted fetal tissue.

A significant portion of the Senate even voted to defund the organization based on this video. The vote failed to pass, albeit narrowly.

Most everyone's stance abortion is a passionately held belief. I'm never going to convince you in this space to change your mind on the procedure itself or the morality of reusing/reselling fetal tissue, nor would I try to.

But I think the current uproar in favor of defunding Planned Parenthood completely misses the boat on one simple fact: Planned Parenthood does SO MUCH MORE than just provide abortions.

I know this might be breaking news to the sort of person who believes this article from The Onion is real, but Planned Parenthood offers a crucial set of sexual health services — for men AND women.

In fact, abortion only accounts for 3 percent Planned Parenthood's services. So why are people so quick to throw away the other 97 percent?

In addition to the free condoms we all know and love, here are some of the critical health services you probably didn’t know Planned Parenthood offered:

• Cervical, breast, and testicular cancer screening
• STD testing and treatment
• Pregnancy counseling
• Menopause treatments
• Vaccines
• Diabetes screening
• Physical exams
• Cholesterol and high blood pressure screening
• Help with quitting smoking

But it's just a baby-killing factory, right?

Do abortion protestors who yell hateful and hurtful things to people visiting Planned Parenthood realize there's a 97 percent chance they're there for something else entirely?

Not only do they offer all of these services, they do so in an accessible and affordable way. According to Planned Parenthood, "75 percent of their clients have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level."

Even if you believe a woman doesn't have the right to decide what to do with her own body, even if you can't stomach the idea that aborted tissues are being used to further medical research (you'd rather see them wasted, I guess?), defunding the entirety of Planned Parenthood over the 3 percent you have an issue with is an INSANE amount of collateral damage.

Would you set your house on fire to kill a spider?