"You could take dollar for dollar -- although I'm not sure we need a half-billion dollars for women's health issues -- but if you took dollar for dollar, there are many extraordinary fine community health organizations that exist to provide quality care for women on a wide variety of health issues. . . . But abortion should not be funded by the government."First, abortion is already, explicitly by law "not funded" by the federal government -- except where Medicaid funds are used in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.
Second, he caught a lot of flak for implying that we shouldn't spend so much money on "women's health issues." So the next day he had to walk that one back, saying he "misspoke." But he didn't help himself much when he did.
He tried to get himself out of the hole by saying that, instead of funding Planned Parenthood at all, money should be re-directed to other women's health organizations "in line with my Florida record."
The problem -- for some of us, anyway -- is that when he was governor of Florida, Jeb Bush did just that. He took money the state was giving to Planned Parenthood and redirected it to abstinence-only sex education programs.
Jeb was supposed to be "the smart one," the one destined to be president. If we "mis-underestimated" Dubya, then maybe everybody has mis-overestimated Jeb.
Ralph
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