On the House floor Wednesday night, Rep. Michele Bachmann warned that the health insurance reform package currently being debated by Congress would set up “sex clinics” in schools where students “taken away” to have abortions.
Bachmann’s information seems to have been gleaned from right-wing media outlets that earlier this year Politifact ruled as lies.
“We see no language in the three main versions of the bill that would allow school-based clinics, which have a long history of providing basic health services to underprivileged students, to provide abortions,” the site wrote. “Nor would the clinics even be new — they have been around for three decades. So we rate the claim Pants on Fire!”
Further, as The Hill notes, any clinics established by the bill would have to follow state and local laws regarding parental consent.
Video and transcript below
But parents are going to excluded from Planned Parenthood as they write these clinics because the bill orders that these clinics protect patient privacy and student records. What does that mean? It means that parents will never know what kind of counsel and treatment that their children are receiving. And as a matter of fact, the bill goes on to say what’s going to go on – comprehensive primary health services, physicals, treatment of minor acute medical conditions, referrals to follow-up for specialty care – is that abortion? Does that mean that someone’s 13 year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus that night? Mom and dad are never the wiser.
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