We Spleen: Michele Bachmann’s Planned Parenthood-Bashing

This past weekend, many conservatives, including several presidential hopefuls, gathered at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, D.C., to campaign for the 2012 elections share their values. Speakers included Paul Ryan, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and the consistently deranged always entertaining Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. After insinuating that the U.S. is on the path to ruin because the percentage of married citizens is significantly lower than it was in the 1950s, she bashed “Obamacare” and abortion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNPLbQNWprs&feature=player_embedded#at=214

The congresswoman insisted that the health-care bill had more than $105 billion in spending “hidden” in it, a theory disproved by the Washington Post‘s Fact Checker in March.

But the doozy came when Bachmann also equated “Obamacare” with U.S. funding of Planned Parenthood and accused the health-service provider of encouraging unspecified illegal activity:

We’re giving money to corrupt organizations like Planned Parenthood that are committing crimes and enabling young minor girls and covering up issues I don’t even want to talk about it because it is so disgusting. … This organization has by their own records performed 324,008 abortions in 2008 and 2009 and that is in addition to the trafficking of underage girls that has gone on under Planned Parenthood’s nose … Do you think maybe we could start here by defunding this organization? I think so! It couldn’t come soon enough. [audience claps and cheers]

When questioned after the speech about what she meant by her ominous accusation about trafficking, Bachmann refused to comment.

From harmless-but-idiotic flubs of U.S. history to dangerous myths that could potentially shape policy, a number of Republicans can’t seem to get things right lately. Bachmann herself has proven to be a sensationalist right-wing conspiracy theorist in the past, with her notion that global warming is a hoax and that Obama has terrorist connections and is anti-American. But isn’t telling the truth one of those “time-honored values”?

Here’s some truth, Rep. Bachmann: Planned Parenthood actually provides vital health services to more than five million people per year, and only three percent of those services are abortion-related. Low cost health services to the poor–isn’t that an idea you should support, given that “help[ing] the poor, the needy and those who have been left behind” is one of the tenets of the Faith and Freedom Coalition?

Photo from Flickr user Gage Skidmore under Creative Commons 2.0

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Kari is a sophomore at University of Missouri where she is majoring in Journalism and International Studies and minoring in Spanish. She is excited to take a break from the Midwest for a summer in L.A. as an intern at Ms.