Written by Tom Walker   

Senator Cruz – it is to be expected that the 2016 election will produce all manner of “pick me, pick me!” opportunism. One of the more recent examples of such opportunism would be your screed urging the destruction of Planned Parenthood.

Two things become abundantly evident upon reading your impassioned Planned parenthood condemnation: a willingness to investigate the actual facts of a contentious issue would never get in the way of your pompously shrill grandstanding in support of lies and deceit. More importantly, it draws into sharp focus how irrecoverably disastrous a Cruz presidency would be.

The easiest of your bombastic claims to refute is your assurance that “ending taxpayer funding of abortion providers will have little impact on a woman’s access to healthcare.”

Really? There are literally millions of citizens, mostly women, but men too, relying on Planned Parenthood for contraception, STD testing, and other services having nothing to do with abortion. Does anyone familiar with the process of navigating healthcare facilities believe that there is such slack in existing resources, beyond Planned Parenthood, that those millions of Planned Parenthood clients, the vast majority of whom are not seeking abortion services, could be seamlessly absorbed into the remaining options without any more than a negligible hiccup? I’ve seen claims to that effect (Jennifer Rubin would be an example), but no credible roadmap describing the means to effectively replace what would be lost via the destruction of Planned Parenthood.

Beyond that, is it possible, even conceivable, that you are unaware of the patently dishonest video editing you cite as your platform for outrage? Surely you would be aware, if you wanted to truly understand the veracity of the videos made public, that the unedited film makes crystal and repeatedly clear that the price of fetal tissue is to recover real incremental costs and not in any way to make a profit. What is more, the women whose aborted tissue is delivered for research sign forms indicating their willingness to have that tissue used in such a fashion.

Perhaps most despicable is your misogynistic pandering without regard to the ultimate societal good Planned Parenthood delivers. Again, could you be unaware that, as The New England Journal of Medicine has pointed out, “The contraception services that Planned Parenthood delivers may be the single greatest effort to prevent the unwanted pregnancies that result in abortion.” It also seems you are destructively willing to dismiss the fact that “Virtually every person in this country has benefitted from research using fetal tissue.”

Shame on you, Senator Cruz. You have resorted to lies and deceit in an effort to ingratiate your campaign with the right wing conservative fringe. May your pandering serve you no better than “I am not a crook” served Richard Nixon.