Arizona Sen. John McCain visited the Star last week. Members of the federal delegation do that regularly during congressional recesses. It’s a chance to catch up, ask questions and hear about what’s going on in Washington. They’re usually interesting conversations.
I asked McCain about Planned Parenthood and the Republican effort to cut all federal funding to the health care organization after the release of videos by an anti-choice organization that says the footage shows Planned Parenthood officials talking about selling fetal tissue for a profit. The video has been edited and the inflammatory claims don’t hold up — women who have abortions can decide to donate the resulting tissue for scientific research and Planned Parenthood’s fee only covers its costs.
But reality rarely catches up with doctored-gotcha-video propaganda.
And, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Sen. McCain said he holds a fundamental belief that “these are babies and they shouldn’t be killed.”
There it is. If you believe a collection of developing cells is a full baby from the very instant of conception, nothing will change your mind. It’s not a conversation that’s over; there’s just no conversation to be had.
“I think all of us are entitled to our fundamental beliefs as to when life begins,” he said. “We’re now saving the lives of babies at an earlier period in the term, thanks to medical technology, that some years ago were a legitimate reason for an abortion.”
Medical advancements can be wonderful. But they don’t pop out of thin air. Scientists work with tissues and cells to create new technologies and find cures or therapies for diseases. Donations of fetal tissue from voluntary abortion procedures or unused embryos from fertility clinics are a necessary part of those advancements.
Thinking about medical research, and where fetal tissue comes from, is uncomfortable. And hearing medical professionals talk dispassionately about medical procedures, as they did in the videos, can be a bit surprising in its casualness. But listen to cops, nurses, even journalists — anyone who regularly sees what many others don’t have to — and there is a level of desensitized everydayness that can be hard for outsiders to understand.
If you think that abortion is wrong, then perhaps you’re willing to pay the price and reject such advancements when faced with personal medical decisions.
Planned Parenthood is a longtime target of people who think they have the right to dictate the most personal parts of our lives. Republicans in Congress, along with the fleet of the GOP presidential hopefuls, are seeking to cancel all of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding because 3 percent of its medical services are abortion-related. It is already illegal to use federal funding for abortions.
The language is telling. McCain, who spoke quietly and in measured sentences during our conversation last week, said he respects those with other views, but then said this:
“I think they’re doing it because that’s what they like to do,” McCain said. “That’s a service that they offer. They do what they do. They believe that it’s not human life. They believe, from what I’ve heard them say, that this is just a service that they provide to women who don’t choose to carry a baby to term.”
McCain said community health centers can provide the same non-abortion medical services that Planned Parenthood does. Ninety-seven percent of Planned Parenthood’s work is in disease screening and treatment, cancer screenings, prenatal care, gynecological care and reproductive education. McCain said he’d build more centers and increase funding to provide care for the lowest-income Americans.
I’m all for more and better-funded community health centers, but women shouldn’t have to give up control of our own medical decisions as the ransom for improving health care for low-income Americans.
McCain’s comparison isn’t apples-to-apples. Planned Parenthood isn’t only for poor women. There’s no income cap. Some services are available on a sliding scale, some are free, but the offices also take insurance. They treat women and men, and are open to all.
But McCain’s response to this information, shared in our conversation, illustrates the divide between fundamental belief and the roadblocks women face in their reproductive health.
“If someone can afford their health care, or has health insurance, it seems to me that they do what I do — I have health insurance and when I need care, I use the health insurance,” he said.
His response makes sense in the context of his experience. But it illustrates the complexity of reproductive health care. We’re used to thinking of access to medical care as an issue confronting low-income people, but it reaches into the middle class, too. Insurance doesn’t cover every medication or procedure, and sometimes going to the family doctor isn’t the best option. These situations are complicated, and delicate.
The senator has never had to figure out how to get a medication that isn’t covered by insurance because of his employer’s religious beliefs, or face not being able to afford to raise a child, or being pregnant because of a sexual assault.
It’s clear that Sen. McCain, and those who share his belief, feel a connection to what they believe to be babies and, for him, that renders the issue simple. But the very real and complicated needs of the living people in whose bodies those cells are carried must not be ignored.
