Boxer Pushes False Claim Planned Parenthood Does Mammograms

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Apr 1, 2011   |   10:30AM   |   Washington, DC

Senator Barbara Boxer, the number one pro-abortion Democrat in the Senate, is pushing a false claim that Planned Parenthood does mammograms as a defense of their status as a taxpayer-funded entity.

That claim comes despite an expose from Live Action, which called 30 Planned Parenthood centers across the country and learned that none of them have mammogram machines or actually do mammograms on site. All of them merely make referrals to legitimate medical centers that provide women with the breast cancer screening service.

Yet, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, Boxer has been repeating these false claims:

California U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer is lambasting what she calls a Republican “vendetta” against Planned Parenthood, saying that efforts in the House Republicans’ proposed budget to entirely defund the organization will impact millions.

In California alone, hundreds of thousands of women, the Democratic Senator said, use the organization’s “life-saving” services — including cancer screenings, mammograms, day-to-day health care, OB-GYN services as well as contraception and family planning. Boxer made the statements this week at a San Francisco press conference.

The local San Francisco CBS television station adds:

U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer paid a visit to San Francisco on Wednesday, taking aim at the House Republicans proposed budget.

Standing at the Ferry Building next to a Marine Corps veteran, a Planned Parenthood patient, whose mammogram detected pre-cancerous cells, an asthma patient and a doctor of thoracic surgery from the University of California, Davis, Boxer described them as the faces of Californians who would be most affected by the Republican plan.

Thomas Peters of Catholic Vote responded to Boxer’s claims and said Live Action is “calling on Senator Boxer to retract her false claims about Planned Parenthood saving lives through the mammograms they don’t provide to women.”

“Senator Boxer comes to Planned Parenthood’s defense in the wake of a huge child sex trafficking scandal as well as their multi-million dollar PR campaign to preserve their $350,000,000 in federal taxpayer funding,” Peters added. “Senator Boxer’s top all-time campaign contributor is the pro-abortion group EMILY’s List and Planned Parenthood regularly donates to and supports her reelection campaigns. In fact, last year Boxer was Planned Parenthood’s “million dollar baby.””

Peters said he is not surprised that Boxer is running with the false claims since she “has been pushing the abortion agenda in the U.S. Senate for 18 years and counting.”

After concerns earlier this year that Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards made false claims in defending its taxpayer funding that it provides mammorams for women, Live Action released videotaped footage of calls to 30 Planned Parenthood centers nationwide in 27 different states where abortion facility staff were asked whether or not mammograms could be performed on site. 

Every one of the Planned Parenthood centers admitted they could not do mammograms. Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells the women calling that they will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admit that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure.

“We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” admits a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona while a staffer at Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kansas tells a caller, “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics.”