Planned Parenthood was, at it's inception, supported by

[WCGreen]

republican women...

My MIL who just passed on this last April, was a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood. It was one of the charities/projects that republican women worked on all the way into the 60's.

We got her to vote for Clinton in 96 and for me in 94 and 96 when I was on the ballot, but I think those were the only three democrats she ever voted for.

It wasn't until the republican party was co-opted by the religious right that she even considered voting for a democrat.

The way Rachel approached the Wyoming republican women legislators she had on reminded me of my MIL...

[Indydem]

1. Most Republicans and Conservatives

Support and advocate birth control.

Not so much abortions.

Things change when the focus of an organization changes.

[nemo137]

3. Which you wouldn't know from the way the extreme anti-choice wing has become their voice.

Seriously, 3% of PP's operations are abortion related. The rest is contraception and reproductive health. If they were really so pro-life and anti-abortion, cutting of Planned Parenthood's funding would be the last thing on their minds. Too bad they've decided that working with radically anti-woman forces is the thing they're going to be good at.

[Indydem]

4. Their argument has been echoed on this board many times.

Why should progressives have to pay taxes for wars for oil?

Why should democrats have to pay taxes to support corporate welfare/ oil subsidies?

Republicans ask why their tax dollars should go to fund abortions.

I don't think either argument holds water, but I can at least see their argument.

[nemo137]

6. That's beside the damn point.

The anti-contraception wing has taken over the Republican party. The anti-war wing, sadly, never took over ours.

[WCGreen]

11. Planned Parenthood is a charity that raises money from tax

deductible funds.

The change is that since more and more people are able to claim the standard deduction instead of itemizing, there is technically less money going to charities like Planned Parenthood spurned only for tax deductibility.

[Hannah Bell]

10. republicans supported abortions. republicans supported sterilization.

the focus never changed. they were fully on-board with limiting the reproduction of the peon classes.

In a 1916 edition of Family Limitation, Sanger advised women douche with boric acid and to take quinine to prevent implantation. She wrote further, "No one can doubt that there are times when an abortion is justifiable but they will become unnecessary when care is taken to prevent conception. This is the only cure for abortions."<35>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Sanger

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Republican women supported Planned Parenthood?

I didn't know that...

How things have changed since those days.

[Critters2]

9. My parents were both Republican when I was a kid.

But the strongest advocates for civil rights in our neighborhood or church, supportive of equality for women, taught me progressive values in general. Fiscally conservative, but not in the nasty, mean-spirited way that Repugs are now. My mother became a Dem after Nixon's crimes, my dad after he felt the Repugs used the judicial process to humiliate Bill Clinton. My mom was a liberal Dem, and active in the party well before she died in 2005. My dad isn't particularly active in party affairs, but as progressive as any you'll find. Just ask him about Scott Walker, and watch his blood pressure go up.

These things are more fluid than we realize. There was a time when the Solid South was a reference to Democratic power.

[CTyankee]

16. Yes, here in CT republican women all over the state participated in driving women

over state lines so they could obtain birth control which was strictly forbidden in CT (remember it was the Griswold v. CT that made this law unconstitutional and Estelle Griswold was the executive director of the state Planned Parenthood at the time).

To this day, the republican women of Greenwich remain among the strongest, if not THE strongest, supporters of PP. But lots of women all over the state drove women to NY, MA and RI...

On my "A Liberal's Tour of New Haven" I point out the site of that PP clinic where Griswold was arrested...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

17. Thanks for the info!

[CTyankee]

19. The part I just love about the history of rich republican women supporting the

family planning movement is how these women would stuff their corsets with diaphragms and condoms they had obtained on their European vacations and smuggle them into the state to be distributed to women who were seeking some form of birth control...

[CaliforniaPeggy]

20. Damn, that's too cool!

[Iris]

5. But they enjoy trotting out Sanger's tendency towards eugenics out as a reason why Dems are horrible

for supporting Planned Parenthood. Kind of ironic.

[WCGreen]

12. There is no dount about it that the original thrust of PP was to

prevent more people from being born. Especially poor people.

[CTyankee]

18. Not entirely true. Sanger was genuinely concerned about the plight of poor women

suffering (and dying) from repeated pregnancies. The eugenics theory was somewhat popular at the time, but that wasn't the most significant reason that Sanger was active in the family planning movement...

[Boudica the Lyoness]

7. I live in a very small

very republican town. Over 25 years ago, I was reading a book from the local library, I can't remember what it was about but the book had a paragraph about abortion. To my surprise, written in lots of different handwriting, all over the margins, was many anonymous pro-choice statements from the local women. Not one pro-life thing was written.

[AndyTiedye]

8. I Think That Was the Only Political Activism My Mom Ever Did

First I ever heard of Planned Parenthood was from my mother,
they were fighting to make birth control legal back then.

She was a Republican most of her life, but pretty much
parted ways with them when they nominated Reagan.

[no_hypocrisy]

13. Republicans were different when I was growing up.

Barry Goldwater was still on the fringes and William F. Buckley was scholarly, not that influential.

[Le Taz Hot]

14. Not ALL Republican Women are Anti-Choice

An anti-choice Republican governor could never get elected in California. Poll after poll shows California Republican women are pro-choice. The enemy in this argument is CHURCHES -- the same enemy to marriage equality.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

15. Look up Margaret Sanger...

[ParkieDem]

21. Bush?

Wasn't Prescott Bush one of Planned Parenthood's founders, or at least on its board?

[IcyPeas]

22. Maddow had 2 female republican representatives from Wyoming

on her show last night. These 2 women from the most Red state in the country want the government to stay out of our doctor's offices. Please watch the video from Rachel's show last night.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/41860569#41860569

almost gives ya' some hope that there are rational republicans out there.