As the curtain opens on the next act of Shutdown Theater in Congress this week, opponents of defunding Planned Parenthood want to remind everyone of all the other, non-abortion vital services they provide for women, such as birth control, STD checks, mammograms and… oh, wait. That last one might be a bit of a problem. This actually isn’t “breaking news” if you’ve been paying attention, but Planned Parenthood doesn’t perform mammograms at any of their clinics around the country. Ed pointed this out early last month, but somehow the talking point manages to keep making its way around the media like a zombie.

Still, since the message wasn’t getting out, a pro-life group scheduled an event where they encouraged women across the nation to call up PP and ask to schedule the procedure. (The Federalist)

Hundreds of women called their local Planned Parenthood clinics Monday to schedule a mammogram, but none were able to successfully secure an appointment. That’s because the nation’s largest abortion provider doesn’t actually offer them.

The phone calls were part of “Schedule Your Mammogram Day,” an event organized by And Then There Were None, a pro-life organization, to raise awareness of Planned Parenthood’s deceptive claims on women’s health.

The misconception that the nation’s largest abortion provider has been offering mammograms is a common claim, repeated by the media. During the Miss America competition last week, Miss Tennessee, Hannah Robinson, parroted one of Planned Parenthood’s favorite talking points when answering a question about whether the $1 billion abortion corporation should lose some of its taxpayer subsidy.

Sometimes I have to wonder if the effort to defund PP isn’t taking the wrong approach. Everything in the floor debate seems to circle back to abortion when there’s a secondary (but frequently more persuasive) issue which is awaiting discussion. We’re in an era of cost cutting – not that you could tell from listening to the Democrats – and the budget needs to be trimmed wherever we can find room to cut. We’re not talking about an insignificant amount of money here and what’s one of the first criteria we look at when discussing budget cuts? Waste and redundancy. What precisely is Planned Parenthood providing that isn’t already available? Even if you’re talking about abortions there are regular doctors in normal hospitals who perform them already. As far as the rest of the women’s health services under discussion, this pretty much says it all:

Perhaps it’s time for some of our legislators to switch up tactics, table the hot button arguments and just ask the Democrats to defend precisely what we’re getting for our money that isn’t already being provided. To close out this segment and return to the mammogram question, I’d like to add this new video from Life Site News on the subject of Planned Parenthood. The topic is serious but they manage to make it rather comical. Pass this one around today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMIHLqUq8aw