Steve Fitzgerald, a Kansas senator from Leavenworth, should have his mouth washed out with soap.
On Monday he parroted the Trump and ultra-conservative line about Planned Parenthood, only in crude terms. “Planned Parenthood (is) worse than the Nazi regime in Germany,” Fitzgerald railed.
Obviously, the senator isn’t a supporter, and his attack arose after someone, as a prank, made a donation to Planned Parenthood is his name — worse than “having one’s name associated with Dachau,” Fitzgerald added.
We get it, he is opposed to abortion, only one of the many things with which Planned Parenthood is involved.
To be so mean-spirited tells us more than a little about the senator. To react so violently and to cast all the organization does to improve women’s health is many steps beyond the pale.
Many have religious convictions that cause them to find abortion wrong, just as many others think quite the opposite, but to permit oneself to attack so violently makes us wonder just how fit Fitzgerald is to serve in a position of authority.
You sure don’t want to cross Fitzgerald if he has a handgun under his coat.
PLANNED Parenthood is not the devil’s handiwork.
Most of the organization’s programming as far as births are concerned has to do with education ahead of conception, 80 percent to be exact. That’s much of what Planned Parenthood is all about, planning ahead of the game and deciding when the time is right to enter the wonderful world of parenthood.
A fact: Just 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services have to do with abortion.
Other facts important to know:
— The organization provides 270,000 Pap tests and more than 360,000 breast examinations in a single year, services that are critical to detecting cancer.
— Planned Parenthood also provides more than 4.2 million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections, including more than 650,000 HIV tests.
THE STEVE Fitzgeralds of the world may argue in favor of abstaining from sexual activities as means of supplanting the necessity of Planned Parenthood’s preventive measures, but hiding one’s head in the sand doesn’t work.
