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Ted Cruz Campaign of Lies Around Planned Parenthood Fails, Pushing Trump to Victory


Washington, DC --- Tonight, Donald Trump emerged as the winner of the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, making it his second victory in the race for the GOP nomination. Planned Parenthood Action Fund released the following statement:

 

Dawn Laguens, Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Action Fund:

“Donald Trump’s victory tonight shows what’s at stake in this election. Behind Trump’s boisterous demeanor lies a dangerous agenda --- and the systematic disregard for the lives of women, of immigrants, and of communities of color in this country.

“Ted Cruz learned a valuable lesson tonight. After a concerted campaign of lies about Planned Parenthood, his campaign crumbled to defeat in South Carolina --- a state he was originally favored to win. His attempt to paint Trump as a moderate on reproductive health care backfired --- and appears to have helped Trump to victory in the end. This confirms voters have no appetite for his wrongheaded attacks on women’s health or rights, and voters don’t buy Cruz’s continued lies about the important care Planned Parenthood provides.

“But don’t mistake Ted Cruz’s lies for the truth: Donald Trump would be a disaster for women’s health and rights. Just like every other Republican candidate, Trump wouldblock patients from accessing reproductive care at Planned Parenthood,  ban safe, legal abortion, andcut insurance coverage of birth control, meaning women would pay an estimated $1.4 billion more a year to cover their birth control. All the lying in the world --- and believe me, Ted Cruz tried --- cannot change that.”

Ted Cruz attempted to use debunked videos made by indicted criminal and anti-abortion extremist David Daleiden as an attack on Donald Trump, additionally flat-out lying to say that Planned Parenthood supported Donald Trump --- a strategy that ultimately just didn't resonate with even Republican primary voters. Cruz has made opposition to abortion and demonizing Planned Parenthood the most defining issue of his candidacy --- incorporating it into his stump speech, bringing it up in the debates, and even attempting to shut down the government last year to ensure that women couldn’t go to Planned Parenthood for health care.


Background: Donald Trump’s Exclusionary America

 

Donald Trump says he “cherish[es]” women, that “the Latinos love Trump and I love them” and that he has a “great relationship with the blacks.” And yet his campaign suggests something entirely different.

 

  • He has demonized Mexican immigrants coming to this country — calling them drug dealers, criminals, and rapists — to justify his horrific plan to deport every undocumented immigrant in this country — ripping millions of people away from their families — and his plan to build a wall separating Mexico from the United States that he said he intends to make Mexico pay for.

  • His vision of a safer and more free America is one that bans any Muslim from entering the United States — an idea that quickly became fodder for a terrorist group who used it in a recruitment video, and used as a talking point by the Klu Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups in their outreach .

  • At a Trump rally, his supporters reportedly beat up a Black Lives Matter protester.  Trump responded by saying, "maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing." Trump elevated a bogus claim that statistics show blacks kill 81 percent of white homicide victims — but “the exact opposite is true,” according to PolitiFact, which gave Trump’s statistics their “Pants on Fire” rating.

 

The reality is that Donald Trump paints a frightening, exclusionary picture of America where people aren’t safe or welcome, where women’s access to reproductive health care is thrown by the wayside, and where communities of color are treated with contempt.

 

Donald Trump’s Stance on Women’s Health and Rights is Virtually Indistinguishable From His GOP Colleagues’:

 

Donald Trump wants to ban access to safe, legal abortion:

 

Trump said that since Roe v. Wade was decided, we’ve been “sliding toward a culture of death”: “Over time, our culture of life in this country has started sliding toward a culture of death. Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence to support this assertion is that since Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court 43 years ago, over 50 million Americans never had the chance to enjoy the opportunities offered by this country.” [Washington Examiner, 1/23/16]

 

Wants to ban safe and legal abortion. [YouTube: Bloomberg Business, 1/24/15]

 

When asked on Meet the Press about health exceptions for women seeking an abortion, Trump said: “My statement on that happens to be, you know, if the mother will die. And you're going to know that. And the problem with the life: If you say life, what does life mean? You have a cold and you're going to end up having an abortion.” [Washington Post, 8/17/15]

 

Opposes overturning the Hyde Amendment: “Public funding of abortion providers is an insult to people of conscience at the least and an affront to good governance at best.”  [Washington Examiner, 1/23/16]

 

Donald Trump wants to cut insurance coverage of birth control

 

Trump wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act: As reported by the Daily Caller, in his book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again,  Trump promises he would kill the Affordable Care Act with the stroke of a pen on his first day in office if he were president. [Daily Caller, 1/15/14]

 

Would repeal ACA in favor of system called ‘Donaldcare’ but won’t offer specifics on what the health care alternative would be: “The blustering billionaire also swore to repeal Obamacare in favor of a new system called ‘Donaldcare,’ but offered no details about what this new health care system would entail.” [The New York Daily News, 9/15/15]

 

Said ACA has “gotta go”: “Trump said that the Affordable Care Act has ‘gotta go’ and that he would repeal the law and replace it with ‘something terrific.’  (Trump added that he’d ‘work out some sort of a really smart deal with hospitals across the country,’ to provide care for poor Americans.)” [Forbes, 7/31/15]

 

Donald Trump wants to cut access to care at Planned Parenthood

 

Said he would support a government shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding: “Asked directly by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt if it’s worth shutting down the federal government to strip Planned Parenthood’s $528 million in government funding, Trump replied: ‘I would.’ And Trump blamed Cruz’s colleagues for abandoning him during the fight to defund Obamacare two years ago. ‘If the Republicans stuck together you could have done it with Obamacare also, but the Republicans decided not to stick together and they left a few people out there like Ted Cruz,’ Trump said. ‘If they had stuck together they would have won that battle. I think you have to in this case [on Planned Parenthood] also, yes.’” [POLITICO, 8/4/15]

 

National polls show Americans believe women have a right to safe and legal abortion.

 

  • ABloomberg Politics national poll found that 67% of Americans surveyed said the Supreme Court was right to rule that women have a constitutional right to abortion.

  • A poll from Perry/Undem shows that nearly two-thirds (63%) of participants said state level anti-abortion laws are going in the wrong direction. And, when asked to choose one word to describe their reaction to the list of new state restrictions, many chose words like “unfair,” “wrong,” “disgusted,” “ridiculous,” and “angry.”

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