Fox Hosts Have No Idea What Planned Parenthood Does Or How Obamacare Works

Bill O'Reilly

Fox hosts Bill O'Reilly and Andrea Tantaros advocated for entirely eliminating Planned Parenthood's federal funding, which helps provide critical women's health services across the U.S., by wildly misrepresenting what the organization spends on abortion and the services they provide.

Congress long ago barred Planned Parenthood from using federal funds for abortion, but the release of two deceptively edited videos -- which attempt to smear the organization's legal practice of allowing women to choose to donate fetal tissues from their abortions to biomedical research -- has nevertheless reanimated anti-choice activists' campaign to defund the nonprofit. 

Jumping off of the controversy, O'Reilly stated unequivocally on his July 22 show that “Planned Parenthood should be defunded, period. I don't want my tax dollars going to them.”

Fox contributor Juan Williams attempted to push back, explaining that by defunding all of Planned Parenthood, “you're talking about taking away medical access to millions of women.” But O'Reilly insisted “It wouldn't take away anything,” and Fox host Tantaros agreed:

TANTAROS: I want to jump in on the women's health point because that's actually a crock. Look, you don't have to be pro-life to be horrified by these videos. A number of my pro-choice friends are horrified by these videos, the same way they were horrified by Kermit Gosnell. And look, here's my view on Planned Parenthood. It provides services now, those services are provided under Obamacare. So, we don't really need Planned Parenthood.

O'REILLY: 90 percent of their services are abortion-related.

TANTAROS: But here's my deal, I don't want to pay for it. It's a business, let private funding go to Planned Parenthood, taxpayer dollars should not have to go to crazy towns like San Francisco and to places like Planned Parenthood.

In fact, Obamacare does not guarantee women access to the critical health services Planned Parenthood's 817 clinics across the country provide, nor are “90 percent of their services” abortion related.

The Affordable Care Act requires that insurance companies cover preventative women's health care services and prenatal care, and has already saved women over $1 billion dollars on birth control by reducing co-pays and deductibles. The law also established funding to construct health centers to increase access to health care.

But the law does not guarantee that there are clinics accessible to provide women these health services. Some local pharmacies may stock prescription birth control, for example, but they aren't equipped to perform pap smears, conduct exams for breast cancer, or provide treatment for sexually transmitted diseases.

That kind of critical women's health care is provided at the hundreds of Planned Parenthood clinics. According to their most recent annual report, from October 2012 to September 2013 their clinics performed almost 900,000 pap tests and breast exams, over 3.5 million birth control information and service requests, and nearly 4.5 million tests and treatments for STIs.

The same report (once again) confirmed that only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's services were abortion-related.

Chart from Planned Parenthood showing spending breakdown

As Vox's Sarah Kliff recently explained, Planned Parenthood receives “more than $500 million annually in government funding, mostly through Medicaid and grants,” and that money is crucial to helping them provide this health care to millions of American women. “Because Planned Parenthood is such a large provider in this space,” Kliff writes, “it's hard to see other clinics stepping in to fill the gap that [defunding] would leave.”

Anti-choice attempts to shutter women's health clinics -- including Planned Parenthood centers -- around the country have already created a massive health crisis in states like Texas, where 13 million women live but currently only have access to a handful of clinics. 

Fox has repeatedly hyped this most recent deceptive campaign against Planned Parenthood, with the network devoting 10 full segments in just one day to hyping the video's false claims.