Lee Stranahan Tells Millions Of Women To Just Go Somewhere Else For Their Cancer Screenings
March 31, 2011 12:22 pm ET by Jeremy Holden
In a blog post notable for its shocking simplemindedness, Breitbart blogger Lee Stranahan accused Media Matters of using "logically invalid, distorted, and deceptive argumentative techniques" to refute Lila Rose's latest video hoax.
The video, anxiously promoted by the right, shows Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards discussing how the organization provides millions of women with access to health care services, including cancer screenings and mammograms. Rose called a few Planned Parenthood centers, found out that they did not have mammogram equipment on site, and declared that this refuted Richards' comments.
It didn't.
As Media Matters showed, Planned Parenthood does, in fact, help make sure that millions of women have access to these services. This is, quite simply, not in dispute.
Enter Lee Stranahan and illogic.
Stranahan himself acknowledged that Planned Parenthood provides access to cancer screenings, including mammograms, although he doesn't seem to like the kind of access Planned Parenthood provides. "It's all referrals," he complained.
Having failed to undercut the plain fact that Planned Parenthood very clearly provides access to cancer screenings and mammograms, Stranahan argues, "That's not the issue and it never was."
This is a difficult, logically challenged position for Stranahan to defend. After all, Cecile Richards said that Planned Parenthood provides millions of women with access to health care. And Lee Stranahan is stipulating that this is true.
In fact, this seems to be exactly the issue.
Back to "logically invalid, distorted, and deceptive argumentative techniques":
STRANAHAN: Did Richards merely say that Planned Parenthood provided access to mammograms? No. She went much further than that.
RICHARDS: Millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning - you know, mammograms.
STRANAHAN: Richards clearly states that if Planned Parenthood loses its funding that millions of women will lose access to mammograms. And that's the issue that Live Action's video was dealing with.
So is it true that millions of women would lose access to mammograms if Planned Parenthood lost their funding?
And the answer is no. It's obviously not true, because all Planned Parenthood is doing is providing referrals, and women could get those anywhere.
First, it's critical to note that Cecile Richards did not say that Planned Parenthood provides access to mammograms, end sentence:
If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning. You know, mammograms, cancer screenings, cervical cancer. [CNN, The Joy Behar Show,2/21/11, via Nexis]
A cynical person might say it's deceptive to cut Richards' comments at "mammograms." But I'll grant that it's possible Stranahan just didn't take the time to look into what Richards actually said before attacking her. After all, while becoming an expert on what Cecile Richards did and did not say, Stranahan could not be bothered to learn that her name is not Selene.
According to Planned Parenthood, more than 1.8 million women received cancer screening and prevention services through Planned Parenthood in 2008.
You know, the millions of women who would lose that access to health care if Planned Parenthood didn't exist.
So, PP does both medical services and referrals. Women will be losing access to the service that provides referrals as well as direct medical services. Stranahan is lying by omission by leaving out that important information.
I'd expect nothing less from a Breitbart hack.
What point where you trying to make? Is your big exposure that they said 1.8 million women, when they meant 1.8 million procedures? And if so; so what? How does that change their mission, and what they did for, as stated above, 3 million women in 2008?
Why do you want Planned Parenthood defunded?
Part of the access that PP offers is direct services, and part of their community efforts are referrals to places where services can be received by women.
So, PP does both medical services and referrals. Women will be losing access to the service that provides referrals as well as direct medical services. Stranahan is lying by omission by leaving out that important information.
Don't think we didn't notice that you did nothing to refute anything I wrote in the very first posting here, yet you replied to the troll who posts here, agreeing with him.
The point you made, that helping women who either receive direct help from PP or get referrals to help from PP should end as a result of losing funding, is callous and disrespectful to women.
See my post below about mammagram services provided under contract with PP.
Women, particularly of low-income status, definitely benefit by referrals to mammagram services provided by PP.
(Consider the alternative of picking a radiology clinic from the Yellow Pages.....which one is suitable for your situation?)
They know their local marketplace and know the most amenable, cost-efficient or low-cost clinics to refer patients to. Also it may be PP medical personnel who actually discover a suspicious lump that a patient has overlooked. They have provide a valuable service in detecting it, and to follow up with a patient-specific referral is also providing a legitimate service that benefits a patient who comes to PP for health screening.
This entire controversy is disingenuous, misleading and nit-picking for a "gotcha" claim to impugn PP. Period!!!!!
In fact, I clearly say in the video that cancer screening may well be a good argument for Planned Parenthood but that Media Matters didn't make it. I'm pro-choice, as I also state in the video. But I'm also opposed to lying; MMfA has no such compunctions.
At no point do I say women should 'just go somewhere else'. If MMfA had any deceny, they'd retract it.
The world is spelled "S-H-O-U-L-D." And not "S-H-O-U-D-L."
Let's just say, half of that then. And if we're talking half, then, oh, 900,000 women are going to have go somewhere else to get their cancer screenings and preventions. But I'm sure that the number is actually a little north of 1 million.
What you're arguing sir, is semantics, and still, the overall point remains. Millions of women ARE going to have to go elsewhere to get their care that PP provides (3 million in 2008).
If she said they'd have to go elsewhere, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Millions will lose access to both direct medical services and medical referrals if PP loses funding.
Look at the top of your monitor's screen, Lee. See the headline there?
How can you possibly reconcile what you've written here with their info and their headline?
What part of that do you not get?
It is PP for poor women or nothing, and many of us will die.
This may seem a fiddly quibble to you but to us it is life and death.
And just for the sake of argument, I'll add that the passage of the health care law in Massachusetts makes that less an issue here than in most parts of the country, since nearly everyone in the state has a health care provider that can provide referrals to organizations that do mammograms and cancer screenings.
I guess, if you look at it this way, that if PP goes out of existence, then yes, millions of women WILL lose access to mammograms. We're not just talking about 1 year here, we're talking about, well, possible forever. I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that becase of PP millions of women have received mammograms that they otherwise would not have received. It's really not a huge overreach at all.
Is that the only problem you have with her statement? If so, then fine, but again, we're talking about losing services for 3 million women per year (not just mammograms, but everything), and again, out of those 3 million women, 72% did not have insurance, or were below the poverty level.
Where are they going to get their health care again?
Some men need to stop interfering in women's health issues because what happens to women's bodies have nothing to do with men's health issues.
Maybe it's time for us women to bind together, win elections, and create and pass laws calling for the forced castration of every man who expresses a desire to control what women do with their bodies.
Then what on earth are you doing working with Breitbart?
STRANAHAN: Richards clearly states that if Planned Parenthood loses its funding that millions of women will lose access to mammograms. And that's the issue that Live Action's video was dealing with.
So is it true that millions of women would lose access to mammograms if Planned Parenthood lost their funding?
And the answer is no. It's obviously not true, because all Planned Parenthood is doing is providing referrals, and women could get those anywhere."
It is bad enough that you could actually call this nonsense an attempt at journalism, Lee. That is pathetic. The fact that you can now accuse others of being disingenuous when, clearly, your entire article is based upon nothing more is just sad. It is just pitiful.
Millions of women will lose access to family planning becomes a lie because only 1.8 million mammograms would just "go elsewhere"? Very slimy.
From Planned Parentood of Waco Newsletter
I read this to mean that PP of Waco IS providing the service through a licensed clinic who perform the procedures, and that PP pays for it. No correction by MMFA is necessary.
Where did she say that Waco PP does mammograms? Oh, that's right, she doesn't. What MediaMatters did was, in another story, quote from a PP pamphlet. They don't need to 'correct' it if it's not true - PP would need to correct their pamphlet. Where's your evidence that the pamphlet was wrong?
What I believe that the PP pamphlet is saying is the Susan G Komen fund provides the funds and the referrals to help women get mammograms. The State of Texas apparently still thinks that the PP Mary Ruth Duncan Health Center provides these services! So, did you or your minions call 254-492-1790? That's the number that the State of Texas has for the site that provides these services for women in 10 central Texas counties.
Where else are they supposed to go if PP loses its funding to have the infrastructure to support the grant from the SGK Breast Cancer fund?
If MMfA and I could figure this out on our own, Lee, why couldn't you? Huh?
Is it possible for you to admit your error? You quite readily demanded that MMfA admit their error, so clearly you think it's an important thing to do. If it's so important, then you should do it now.
If not, you're just the standard dishonest hypocrite rightwinger we so often see here. I'm dissappointed that you haven't already apologized after I provided a response a half an hour ago. I expect I'll still be disappointed 2 days from now.
Prove me wrong.
And that's because he's dishonest troll who who won't acknowledge that he was 100% wrong here.
JoeSixpark says "Then what on earth are you doing working with Breitbart?"
Lee Stranahan says "Has Media Matters corrected their statement that the Planned Parenthood clinic in Waco does mammograms?"
What does "Has Media Matters corrected their statement that the Planned Parenthood clinic in Waco does mammograms?" have to do with the question you were asked? You didn't even try to answer the question that was posed to you. That's what the dishonest trolls who post here repeatedly do.
Lee, you are quite different from the many "opposing" voices who post here. You seem to maintain a composed and non-hostile disposition that suggests the possibility of of reasonable discussion or debate. This is a poor forum for that, especially when the issue is imbued with hair-splitting semantics and doctrinaire mindsets. But you actually show up, and I think that is respectable.
While you talk a good game about fairness, accuracy, and deceit; barring specifics, you are not communicating a willingness to look at comparable issues coming from your side of the ideological spectrum.
Perhaps you just have a job to do and you do it.
Many, if not most of the MMfA advocates who post here can make the same distinctions in MMfA rhetoric and tactics that you can make. Some of us do independant research to confirm information presented here on the site and in these comment threads. I for one can make my own distinctions in determining the credibility of this site's blogs, research and video clips, and can nitpick the details with the best of them. My main interest is in accessing the resources to come to my own conclusions, and THAT is the overriding value of MMFA, not relying on them to tell me what to think.
Having said that, Lila Rose is most definitely NOT a person you should expend your efforts to defend....unless you have a job to do and are simply doing it. In which case, any debate with you would ultimately serve little purpose.
And I have no 'job' here -- I'm stating my opinions. Period, the end. I'm working with Breitbart on Pigford. That's it/ These videos, I made free -- like most of the other 250+ videos I've done on my YouTube page.
I'm not defending Lila Rose so much as attacking lying. I think there are plenty of ways to counter Lila Rose's arguments without resorting to deception or false arguments and I think my video is clear on that.
All that being said, I appreciate your comment.
The Susan G Komen fund has given Planned Parenthood clinics, including the one in Waco, money. With that money, they provide referrals and funding for low-income women to get breast cancer screenings at no or low cost. Therefore, Planned Parenthood provides access to mammograms. Therefore, there's no "lies" coming from MMfA.
If he's not a liberal, then he's employing a tactic called plausible deniability to bolster his credibility (ie the "I've got no personal stake in the matter" defense).
The best lies contain elements of truth. If and when Breitbart is accurate in any detail, critical or not, he and his cohorts are perfectly capable of proving their point and don't need the aid and backing of any liberal.
This is not a legal matter. It will not wind up in court. Anyone tempted to compare it to, say, the ACLU defending an organization it loathes would be ill-advised to do so.
Sure you are, fella. A liberal d00d who knows nothing and cares less about half the population. How very effing liberal of you.
Dishonest man that you are, you're claiming that you aren't advocating for something that will be the undeniable result of what you're advocating.
You couldn't hardly be more disingenuous.
And if they lose funding, then women lose access, which is what you dishonestly asserted that you weren't trying to do. If A, then B.
And don't get me started on "SOE techniques". That 2nd video is just plain BS. The most effective use of search engine optimization is exemplified by right wing blogs, by their sheer VOLUME of viral posts on a single topic. One blogger's "accusation" is posted at 5 AM and by 10 AM Google search pages are flooded 10 pages deep with the same story.
On a given day an inquisitive person might enter the name "Kevin Jennings" to find out who he is only to find page after page after page of hits that "identify" him as a pedophile who works for the Whitehouse.
How do you like them apples, Lee? "Soe techniques"......gimme a break!!!!!!!
You tell a lie right there.
We can NOT get those anywhere.
That is the point.
We cannot afford to pay a doctor $100 dollars for an office visit so he can give us a referral for a mam. You are just plain wrong about this.
I do not know if it is from ignorance or malice. It doesn't really matter except for the poor fools who ever again believe anything you say.
Clearly Stranahan is of the generation that did not learn to diagram sentences, or he would not parse the sentence the way he did. Richards was very clear that she meant millions of woman would lose health care access, of which mammograms would be a subset. He also doesn't seem to understand the meaning of "access"
It's evident that none of these people have ever walked into a PP office dressed as a regular person instead of a prostitute. I have, and they are dead wrong about the services. When I had no other health care provider and very little money, I was able to get birth control and preventive services through PP.
The funny thing is that they turn this on its head when talking about abortion. Many PP clinics do not contain abortion services, they provide access to abortions, that is, referrals. I've never met a proponent of banning abortions who considers them less of an abortion provider because clinics don't actually contain the abortion services, but somehow it's a different story when talking about mammograms.