Abortion is not, and never has been, a women's health issue, as even abortion advocates admit that less than .01% of abortions are for health reasons. Planned Parenthood does not have to be the largest provider of women's health, and it is hardly the only way for women to receive treatment for their petty plumbing problems. I imagine anything life-threatening would be equally well-treated in a hospital. The issue at hand is over the Democrats absolute stubborn refusal to withhold funds and subsidies for people engaged in a practice about half the country finds morally abhorrent and repugnant. Only the most willfully obtuse could con/pretend that the issue of Planned Parenthood is about the chronology of events on a recent video. The videos are only a major news item, because the provide an opportunity for the leftwing mainstream media to make a straw man argument in defense of their apparently holiest sacrament, abortion. Since they can't actually defend the practice itself, and persist on making the argument about nitpicky delineations of peripheral issues, they look for chances to swing into action on propaganda that is still less mendacious than "An Inconvenient Truth" (speaking of which, appointing "science deniers" to science committees is about as "stupid" as putting drought deniers on the raindance committee; even if they are wrong, the worst they are going to do is prevent us from being forced to subsidize nonsensical solutions).

The real objection is that people are getting fed up with Planned Parenthood getting rammed down everyone's throat, and the arrogance of its political supporters. Even if you disagree with banning abortion, and think people should have the right to obtain it if they so choose, why must tax dollars go to fund it? Why do Democrats insist on putting abortion protection on even the most unrelated legislation, like an amendment to a bankruptcy reform bill to prevent fines from picketing abortion clinics from being evaded through bankruptcy proceedings? Tell me that the party that pulls bullshit stunts like that is primarily interested in women's health, and that abortion is a mere peripheral item that keeps getting dragged in as an excuse by zealots to bring out burkas, because it would be no less fallacious or insulting than the rest of this tripe. The only zealots are the Democrats. Republicans are practically desperate to compromise on abortion, but Democrats insist on getting their own way, all the way. Are there even more than a handful of national politicians who actually advocate universal prohibition of abortion? There are far more mainstream Democrats who support abortion up until halfway through birth, than Republicans who want to outlaw eugenically-motivated infanticide. I don't think there is a GOP candidate who advocates banning abortion in the case of rape. Even Todd Akin, viewed as the most extreme and anti-feminist position to come down the pipe in years, was willing in principle to allow abortion when the mother was raped, which completely misses the point of any sane opposition to abortion. The rape exception ONLY makes sense if you view abortion as some sort of distasteful birth control, in which case, screw you, asshole, that's none of your business, and stay out of strangers' vaginas. The ONLY legitimate opposition to abortion is predicated on the belief that a fetus is a human being. In which case, allowing abortion in the case of rape is like allowing the murder of a ten year old because he was conceived in rape. The most extreme Republicans on the national scene are willing to make compromises that make no sense in principle, but which should meet any reasonable criteria for "women's health" issues and the Democrats won't give a hair.

An equivalent Republican issue would be if they completely ignored all of Democrats' moral objections to firearms, not only stonewalled any and all attempts to restrict the use of firearms from children, refused to require parents be notified of children buying guns, refused to allow restrictions on even the most extreme forms of weaponry, up to nuclear, biological or chemical arms, refused to let photographs or videos of shooting injuries be shown at any public education or government-funded medical facility, attached riders and amendments to ensure that no legislation, no matter how unrelated or irrelevant could be used to infringe even indirectly on gun ownership and use, and camouflaged the whole thing as anti-rape positions, getting the media to play along and paint even the most mild criticism of firearm use as incitement to rape, and in addition, held the entire government apparatus hostage when Democrats tried to prevent federal subsidies of gun dealers and manufacturers. And when a government shutdown over Republican obstinacy and refusal to abandon their NRA masters by even a hair seemed imminent, Anonymous2000 posted a comment insisting that no federal tax money goes to buy guns (after all, they only spend hundreds of millions of dollars on helping sporting goods companies and self-defense organizations publish pamphlets with tips on locking your house, and staying out of dangerous neighborhoods - that money isn't spent on guns themselves, even if most of what those self-defense organizations DO is teach shooting classes, retail guns and ammunition and push concealed carry as the optimal personal security choice).

As I said above, to make this kind of argument, you are either the most bald-faced liar, the most obstinately blinkered partisan or the stupidest & most gullible person ever to pick up the NY Times.