Fact Check: Herman Cain Wrong on Inflammatory Attacks Against Planned Parenthood
For Immediate Release: May 11, 2012
Statement by Veronica Byrd, director of African-American Media, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, responding to Herman Cain’s comments on CBS Face the Nation (transcript below):
“Hermain Cain is wrong on the facts and clearly out of the mainstream in his attack on Planned Parenthood.
“Planned Parenthood health centers are trusted nonprofit health care providers to which one in five women has turned at some point in her life for preventive health care and information, including birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, STD testing and annual exams.
“Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses provide confidential, nonjudgmental care to all women, and respect them to make the best decisions for their own health and family circumstances.
“Planned Parenthood opposes discrimination in any form and each of the nearly 800 health centers is committed to providing every woman who comes through its doors with the full range of high quality health care, regardless of where she lives, her race or ethnic background, religion, sexual orientation, or income level.
“While Herman Cain can’t keep straight what he believes when it comes to women’s health, Planned Parenthood health centers work every day to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and keep women healthy.
“It is simply unacceptable for those who oppose legal abortion to use inflammatory and divisive language based on race to push an ideological agenda."
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FACT: The Guttmacher Institute has a study on the misleading claim that most abortion clinics are located in predominantly African-American neighborhoods. The fact is that fewer than one in 10 abortion clinics are located in predominantly African-American neighborhoods.#
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/evidencecheck/2011/01/19/Guttmacher-Advisory.pdf
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CBS Face the Nation
Rush transcript, 10.30.11
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-3460_162-20127628/face-the-nation-transcript-october-30-2011/?tag=contentMain;contentBody
[…]
BOB SCHIEFFER: Okay. I want to ask you, since we're on the subject of abortion, it was at one point back there when the question of Planned Parenthood came up and you said that it was not Planned Parenthood, it was really planned genocide. Because you said Planned Parenthood was trying to put all these centers into the Black communities because they wanted to kill Black babies--
HERMAN CAIN (overlapping): Yes.
BOB SCHIEFFER: --before they were born. You still stand by that?
HERMAN CAIN: I still stand by that.
BOB SCHIEFFER: Do you have any proof that that was the objective of Planned Parenthood?
HERMAN CAIN: If people go back and look at the history and look at Margaret Sanger's own words, that's exactly where that came from. Look-- look up the history. So if you go back and look up the history-- secondly, look at where most of them were built. Seventy-five percent of those facilities were built in the Black community. And Margaret Sanger's own words-- she didn't use the word genocide but she did talk about preventing the-- the increasing number of poor Blacks in this country by preventing Black babies from being born.
BOB SCHIEFFER: So-- so you would not see any advantage to having young mothers get counsel and advice that Planned Parenthood could give them? I mean, with so many Black babies born out of wedlock?
HERMAN CAIN: There are a lot of centers that offer sincere counseling rather than Planned Parenthood claiming to be those centers when in fact they would rather for the young lady to come in and say they want to get an abortion and facilitate that. Plenty of centers out there genuinely do that. What I'm saying is Planned Parenthood isn't sincere about wanting to go try to counsel them not to have abortions.
[…]