Planned Parenthood Prez: “Abortion is Healthcare”

Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood, appeared before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday in an attempt to repair the abortion mill’s national reputation. As conservatives in Congress try to figure out a way to defund Planned Parenthood, Richards explained to the committee that her organization had done nothing wrong.

“Abortion is healthcare,” she said at one point.

That drew a stinging response from Rep. Diane Black of Tennessee. “As a nurse,” Black said, “I will challenge that every time. Abortion isn’t healthcare.”

Well, in all fairness, you don’t need to be a nurse to see the absurdity of that claim. Abortion is healthcare? If that’s the case, then the word itself has lost all of its meaning. And if “healthcare” is no longer a meaningful term and “affordable” has proven to be a meaningless term, then it’s clear we made the right choice when we came up with the moniker “Obamacare.” See, the left whined that conservatives were being unfair with that slur in the beginning, but we were really just future-proofing Obama’s prize legislation.

It has been grimly amusing to watch Richards and her organization flail about, trying desperately to find a defense that will resonate with the American public. First, the argument was that less than 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services fell under the abortion umbrella. Next, it was that women would suffer without Planned Parenthood’s unique approach to healthcare. Then, it was that the videos from the Center for Medical Progress were heavily doctored. All of those defenses have come crumbling down.

Still, Richards is sticking by them, apparently hoping that Americans aren’t paying close attention to this scandal. She continued to insist that the videos were “deceptively edited” in her testimony, despite the fact that a forensic analysis has shown that this is not the case. Coalfire Systems, at the request of the Alliance Defending Freedom, conducted a thorough analysis of the videos.

“Analysts scrutinized every second of video recorded during the investigation and released by CMP to date and found only bathroom breaks and other non-pertinent footage had been removed,” said an ADF spokesman. “Planned Parenthood can no longer hide behind a smokescreen of false accusations and should now answer for what appear to be the very real crimes revealed by the CMP investigation.”

Obviously running out of legitimate defenses, House Democrats vehemently accused Republicans of “rampant misogyny” in their treatment of Richards. Apparently, lawmakers are expected to soft-pedal their questions when a woman is testifying. You can judge for yourself whether or not Democrats would be singing this tune if it was Carly Fiorina or some other conservative woman on the stand.

In the end, this really all comes back to that three-word statement: “Abortion is healthcare.” Is America so far gone that we’re willing to stand by and accept this assertion? It’s “healthcare” to end the life of a baby before it ever has the chance to take its first breath? If that’s where we are in 2015, then we have bigger problems than where our tax dollars are going.

Cecile Richards has 520,000 reasons to make that claim.

What’s the excuse for the rest of us?