Speaker Paul Ryan: Health centers, not Planned Parenthood, should get taxpayer funding

On January 12, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) took part in a CNN town hall. The event featured questions from the audience, including a young woman who asked, “If Planned Parenthood is defunded, then where will millions of women, low income groups, and people like myself go?” Ryan had recently announced plans to defund Planned Parenthood through a budget reconciliation.

In his answer, Ryan emphasized that he wants people to still get the health care they need, and that they can better do so by going to Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs):

As Live Action News has emphasized before in the discussion about what would happen to women’s health care should Planned Parenthood be defunded, these FQHCs vastly outnumber Planned Parenthood locations and provide health care without committing abortions — a morally problematic, or at least controversial, procedure to many Americans who don’t want their hard-earned money associated with such an entity.

For women (or anyone) to get “preventive screenings” and other such services, they don’t need Planned Parenthood, which performs only 0.97 percent of the market share for Pap smears and 1.8 percent of breast exams (which are not the same as mammograms). At FQHCs, women, men, and children can get comprehensive health care. The same cannot be said for Planned Parenthood.

In Wisconsin, Ryan’s home state, the 22 Planned Parenthood locations are drastically outnumbered by the 162 FQHCs.

When pressed by moderator Jake Tapper, Ryan also emphasized that many Americans do not want their tax dollars going to a scandal-ridden organization, evoking conscience protections as an American value:

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"For every Planned Parenthood there are 20 community health centers" - @SpeakerRyan at @CNN #RyanTownHall #WomensHealthNotAbortion #ProLife

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3:30 PM · Jan 13, 2017

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