In the ongoing battle for state funding in North Carolina, Planned Parenthood may have underestimated the ire of its elected opponents.
The Winston-Salem Journal reports North Carolina State Rep. Larry Pittman (R) sent an email to colleagues in which he accused the family planning provider of "getting wealthy on murder for hire."
Pittman is a member of the state's Health and Human Services Appropriations committee that voted to defund Planned Parenthood earlier this year.
Planned Parenthood “deals out nothing but deception, death, personal devastation, and moral degradation," Pittman wrote in the email, which was a reply to a May 24 email from Planned Parenthood urging lawmakers not to cut funding for it. "Never will I agree to give that bloody, indecent, immoral organization one penny. I will not be satisfied until it is outlawed.”
The Planned Parenthood email had tried to make the case that it actually reduces the incidence of abortion in North Carolina by providing birth control services to 61,000 women a year, in addition to thousands of cancer and STD screenings. Pittman pushed back against that claim in a comment to the Independent Tribune. “My sources tell me that 75 percent of [Planned Parenthood’s] income comes through abortions,” he told the paper. “To say that they would try to reduce the incidence of abortion is like saying a baker would go around trying to get people to stop eating bread.”
Abortion actually accounts for about 3 percent of the non-profit provider's revenue, according to its 2009-2010 annual financial report.
Planned Parenthood did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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