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Op-Ed about Planned Parenthood, the Executive Council and Dartmouth Hitchcock

by: JeffBallardforSenate

Wed Aug 24, 2011 at 16:12:49 PM EDT
(Part moved below the fold - promoted by William Tucker)

Today I had the opportunity to attend the Executive Council's meeting at the Goodwin Health Center in Somersworth. While at the meeting the Council voted on an otherwise benign contract between Health and Human Services and Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover, NH.  The contract is for Dartmouth Hitchcock to provide attentional epidemiology resources on an as needed basis, for occasions such as the anthrax incident at the University of New Hampshire in 2009.

After the meeting I took a few minutes to speak with my Councilor, Dan St. Hilarie. I asked him about his vote against Planned Parenthood, but in approval of today's Dartmouth contract, since they both provide abortion services. He told me the Dartmouth vote was different since it was for epidemiology services and not family planning services.

In the past Councilor St. Hilaire said he opposed taxpayer money supporting organizations that provide abortions. With today's vote he didn't have that same objection though.

Today he told me that if Planned Parenthood started a new 503c for it's abortion services and it was completely separate from it's women's health services that he would vote to fund the women't health services part.  This is a completely unnecessary step since Federal Law already blocks Planned Parenthood from using federal funds for abortion services.
JeffBallardforSenate :: Op-Ed about Planned Parenthood, the Executive Council and Dartmouth Hitchcock
This moves to ask why hasn't the Council brought up Dartmouth Hitchcock forming a separate 503c for the portion of the medical center which performs abortion? Otherwise how can we track if money we are paying for an "as needed" service is not being diverted by way of the Hospital's General Fund into it's women's services and being used to pay for abortions?  In Councilor St. Hilarie's own words that is the only way to insure public monies do not fund abortions.

While it is difficult to compare Dartmouth and Planned Parenthood, it's not apples to oranges, it is more of oranges to nectarines. Dartmouth provides a wider ranger of services, but they both provide women's health services including abortions.  If you are going to set a standard of increased government regulation and interference for one, set it for both.

Personally I would rather see less government regulation here. The Federal Government has established guidelines which medical professionals have been following for some time, why do we need the state to be involved and doubling up on regulation?

Please call your Councilors and encourage them to hold the same standard they hold for Planned Parenthood to any of the medical facilities they approve contracts for. It is time to end double standards and hypocrisy in Concord.
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Op-Ed about Planned Parenthood, the Executive Council and Dartmouth Hitchcock | 6 comments
Hear hear! (4.00 / 4)
In addition to Jeff's excellent points, it was great to see a room full of Planned Parenthood supporters at today's Council meetings, include Strafford Co. Dems chair Caitlin Rollo, Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter and more.  And the best part was Representative Perry's swearing-in:



What an amazing photo! n/t (4.00 / 1)

[ Parent ]
I'll second that! (4.00 / 1)
That picture is a classic.  
[ Parent ]
Spreading deprivation around equally is not a proper response. Public (0.00 / 0)
officials should not be practicing medicine, playing doctor-once-removed behind the shield of funding.
Depriving people of access to medical care by restricting payment is cowardly.

That said, it's my sense that much of the antagonism toward "planned parenthood" is based on the subconscious perception that people who plan to be parents are less likely to produce fungible troops or disposable children than people who just go with their instincts and "let the devil take the hindmost."  
Ditto for their attitude towards Social Security.  Whatever their monetary interests, a society that's secure is contrary to the conservative preference for keeping people under stress and more willing to do what they're told.

The reality is that pensioners represent a funnel through which a steady stream of cash is pumped into the general population.  Instead of care having to be provided for free by people who might not even be competent, caregivers (providers of food, shelter, clothing, medicines, entertainment) get compensated for their labor. How can you control a nation when a third of the economy runs on the whims of old people?

keep em poor, take away their health services and you get the military fodder you want and the economic apartheid you seek. (4.00 / 1)
Unplanned pregnancies rising among poor U.S. women: study

ReutersBy James B. Kelleher | Reuters

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Unintended pregnancies, which make up nearly half of all pregnancies in the United States, are increasingly concentrated among low-income women, a study showed on Wednesday.

Unplanned pregnancies have skyrocketed among poor women in recent years even as such pregnancies among their affluent peers have dropped, according to the study, to be published in the online edition of the journal Contraception.

Researchers from the Guttmacher Institute found the unintended pregnancy rate among women with incomes below the federal poverty line jumped by 50 percent between 1994 and 2006, the latest date available, from 88 per 1,000 to 132.

Meanwhile, the unplanned pregnancy rate among women with incomes at least 200 percent above the poverty line fell 29 percent from 34 per 1,000 to 24, the researchers found, using data from the federal National Survey of Family Growth.

Of the 6.7 million pregnancies tracked in 2006, some 49 percent were unintended, up from 47 percent in 1994, according to the women themselves.

slight correction of a name (0.00 / 0)
"Dartmouth Hitchcock Hospital in Hanover, NH" should read Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, NH.
Op-Ed about Planned Parenthood, the Executive Council and Dartmouth Hitchcock | 6 comments

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