In a Fox News town hall on May 8th, Amy Klobuchar, one of 21 Democratic presidential candidates, repeated the false claim that Planned Parenthood provides mammograms, a claim so old and so often debunked that many have stopped repeating it.
“In their lifetime, one in five women go there,” she said. “And most of them are going there for contraception, birth control, they’re going there for mammograms, they’re going there for cancer screenings, and yet over and over again, this president has tried to cut that funding for Planned Parenthood,” she said, referring to President Donald Trump.
READ: Extreme: Where current Democratic presidential candidates stand on abortion
The subject came up when she was criticizing the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services rule, which cuts funding to organizations who do not have a “clear financial and physical separation between Title X funded projects and programs or facilities where abortion is a method of family planning.” The rule could strip Planned Parenthood of up to $60 million annually in Title X funding. The rule is not currently in effect, as it was enjoined by a judge.
In a subsequent tweet, Klobuchar repeated classic pro-abortion messaging, without correcting her error about mammograms. “Health care decisions should be between patients and their doctors,” she wrote. “Period. #KlobucharTownHall.” But plenty of people weren’t having it.
@amyklobuchar Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide mammograms, Amy. Google it. #KlobucharTownHall
— Josey Wales???? (@clint4usa) May 8, 2019
.@amyklobuchar just said women go to #PlannedParenthood for mammograms. That’s false. They don’t even do them. #KlobucharTownHall #Fox https://t.co/UWZv7oYuK4
— Politically Slanted (@slantedpolitics) May 8, 2019
@amyklobuchar is lying or just ignorant. #PlannedParenthood does not do mammograms & never has.
She’s parrotting the lie that Cecile Richards tried to sneak by us.#klobuchartownhall— Webb (@cobra429jet) May 8, 2019
The claim that Planned Parenthood offers mammograms has been repeatedly debunked since 2011, when then-president of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards claimed on the Joy Behar Show that women would lose access to healthcare services if Planned Parenthood were defunded, and specifically named mammograms among those services. Yet despite this being a flagrant lie, it continues to be repeated, including by President Barack Obama, the former Miss Tennessee, and numerous celebrities.
On October 2, 2015, the Washington Post gave the claim that Planned Parenthood offers mammograms three Pinocchios, in reaction to a statement by Democrat Rep. Carolyn Maloney on September 29th of that year, upholding a rating it gave to President Obama during the 2012 presidential election for using the same false claim. It has likewise been debunked by Snopes, PolitiFact, and FactCheck.org.
The question is, will Klobuchar be held accountable for repeating this lie?
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