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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   32062 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic - Abortion.

It sounds to me like Congress put a condition on federal Medicaid funding, South Carolina is ignoring it, and the Supreme Court is saying "the federal government can enforce the condition by taking away South Carolina's Medicaid funding" knowing it will not actually do so, effectively nullifying the condition Congress put in place. Maybe the court decision was right, you don't want to create a situation where the government is buried in endless lawsuits, but it certainly looks like the executive branch is just blatantly ignoring the law. If that's acceptable, I don't want to hear any complaints about Democrats refusing to enforce immigration laws.

  • -11

effectively nullifying the condition Congress put in place

This is not true. Congress when creating conditions gets to create both the rule and define the process by which it is enforced. That is their prerogative. They can chose whether it can be enforced by {individual plaintiffs bringing suit in Federal court} and/or {the HHS secretary decides and can withhold the money} and/or {any other enforcement scheme}.

Now if the statement is that Congress passed a law with no reasonable enforcement mechanism, I don't think that's terribly controversial. Indeed they do that all the time, which is comparable (after a fashion) to not passing the law at all. But they are entitled by Art I to do so, at least in the sense that there isn't a judicial remedy if they don't provide for one.

Congress has put many conditions on Medicaid, and only through controversial interpretations of various statutes is PP eligible in any state, let alone South Carolina.

What interpretations, and what controversy?

The interpretation that you can provide money to an abortion provider without that being considered funding abortions. This is controversial because every intelligent person knows money is fungible, and if medicaid gives PP $10000 for providing strep throat screenings, that money helps keep the abortion mill facility open.

If the strep throat screening cost $10K to provide, then not. The question seems to be whether it's a cross-subsidy.

There's no question its a cross subsidy. The medicaid stuff pays for the salaries of the same staff and the rent of the same building.

That’s very different than a cross subsidy. A cross subsidy would mean the Medicaid stuff pays more than its prorated share of the staff and building usage. Given bottom barrel Medicaid rates I doubt that.

Maybe there’s a different take that their non Medicaid services aren’t enough volume to pay fixed costs and so the medicaid stuff fills out volume. But that’s a weak argument because literally every purchase from any entity whatsoever pays a share of fixed costs. It proves way too much.

Money is, in principle, fungible... but is there clear evidence that Medicaid reimbursements "keep the abortion mill facility open?" (E.G., Analyses of natural experiments?) Pro-choice donors may say they're passionate about all low-cost health services, but are they opening their wallets to donate to non-profit sexual health/OBGYN clinics that don't provide abortions?

Given the number of closures of PP in states that banned abortion, they do not.

So... the abortions are subsidizing the Medicaid patients, rather than Medicaid subsidizing abortion?

The donations are subsidizing both, and they are motivated by abortion. Abortions are pretty profitable from what I understand though.

So... Medicaid isn't funding abortions at Planned Parenthood? (In addition to what you wrote, my understanding is that Medicaid payments are so low, they're below-cost for many things, so the motivation to accept it is often that some other government funding is conditioned on Medicaid participation.)

Especially in abortion ban states, PP operates simply as any other OB clinic. They have doctors, give fda approved treatments, and accept insurance. There is no procedure you can get at PP that you can't get at any hospital. Granted, their doctors are probably more likely to push birth control, but in my ime many doctors at hospitals and ordinarly clinics will do it too.

Show me the statute that would make Planned Parenthood ineligible.

Pub. L. No. 94-439 § 209, 90 Stat. 1418, 1434 and all similar joinders attached to funding resolutions.

Planned Parenthood does more than just provide abortions. If you can't see the difference between "Medicaid doesn't cover abortion" and "Medicaid can't cover non-abortion care if the provider also provides abortions" I don't know what to tell you.

Money is fungible. Things like rent, electricity, staffing, etc are all shared. They cannot be separated. You can't provide money to PP without funding abortion. If you wanted to, you could spin off the abortion wing, call it Banned Parenthood, make sure there is no staffing overlap, and charge them market rates for rent and facilities, maybe you'd have a decent argument.

The whole point of PP is to provide abortions, everything else is a smoke screen.

Last I checked a majority of what PP does is not-social-conservative-approved-but-uncontroversially-healthcare stuff like STD treatments. That being said, this is still the equivalent of the state of New York not sending federal gun safety program money to the NRA, despite being the nationwide leader in elementary school gun safety training and range safety training. They kinda made their bed and now must lie in it.

majority

In the sense that its basically impossible to do more abortions than write prescriptions for birth control and penicillin, I guess this is true. But PP's own behavior in which clinics it has closed over time indicates that they don't particularly care about providing those services, or that the clinics cannot justify their own existence without providing the profitable abortions for which those services are merely a smokescreen.

PP seems to show up in lots of anecdotes about cross-sex hormone prescriptions, especially for trans minors with relatively few questions asked. As far as I can tell (see SCOTUS thread) those are rather controversial. But I can't say what fraction of their business that is.

Democrats defected first with immigration laws. Maybe deliberately bringing in millions and millions of people through a legal loophole wasn't the best idea to encourage a spirit of cooperation. Endlessly cooperating with them is a sure way to get trampled on.

Democrats defected first with immigration laws

More accurate to say that it was a bipartisan phenomenon engaged in by Republicans like George W. Bush.

What laws did bush blatantly refuse to enforce?

(Not OP)

As stated, I think the claim is hyperbolic and TTBOMK wrong.

Having said that, the Bush-era GOP-controlled White House and Congress could have prodded states to mandate that all employers use E-Verify, by threatening to withhold various federal moneys from noncompliant states, but they didn’t.

I grant you that this would have required Congress to pass new legislation, so the blame doesn’t lie solely with Bush, but Bush had a trifecta for a decent chunk of his 2 terms and easily could have made such legislation a priority. That he didn’t speaks volumes about the values of the GOP establishment of that era.

Anecdatally, it feels like the backlash against (what was perceived as) the Bush-era GOP establishment cucking on illegal immigration was one of two initial rifts within the party that first emerged in the late 2000s/early 2010s, then metastasized and eventually led to Trump’s 2016 takeover (the other rift being the Ron Paul libertarian/Tea Party movement)

The ones against illegal immigration.

In that case bush never defected against the dems. The dems started the defection.

No, that's less accurate.

I understand that 'more abortions for black women(and this is South Carolina)' is your #1 priority. But no one said you can't complain about South Carolina not funding planned parenthood.

I understand that 'more abortions for black women(and this is South Carolina)' is your #1 priority

Don't attribute motives to people they have not stated.

He openly admits he's a eugenicist, prioritizes abortion access, and c'mon, do you really believe the population of South Carolinans he doesn't want reproducing isn't extremely black-heavy?

Being fair to Alexander, he's not a racist. He's a classist. He doesn't want white trailer trash having litters of kids, either. That's why he always bangs on about religiosity: you Bible-thumpers and Catholics, you pro-lifers, don't you realise what you are doing by encouraging teenagers and low-economic status women to have babies at a young age that they can't possibly support themselves?

He openly admits he's a eugenicist

No s***. It always circles back to DemsRRealRacist, Bible thumping, and not being very bright.

  • -12

DemsRRealRacist

It is true that there is a set of people in the United States who believe in inate differences between races and want to see those differences reflected in policy. It is also true that the overlap between that set and the set of people who regularly vote Republican is minimal at best.

Okay, that's enough 4chan-level shitty comments out of you, dipping into personal antagonism.

A lot of users are eagerly anticipating your banning. I try to factor in your unpopularity for just running against popular sentiment when you get reported constantly, but the fact is, your reports are increasingly for low-effort shitty comments and you seem to be trying to do a speed run on how many digs you can get in before you're banned. You actually occasionally have some interesting things to say, but it's mostly buried beneath snark and disdain.

You've gotten a lot of warnings and no bans yet. Here's your first one-day ban. I am disappointed that once again a left-leaning poster cannot control himself enough to avoid getting banned, but that seems to be the path you are on. Change my mind.

a left-leaning poster

Since Turok can't respond, I'll give out an eyeroll on this one -- I'm ambivalent to his banning, but you sure aren't reading very closely if you think he's left-leaning.

His whole schtick is sneering at right-wingers for being low-class. Maybe he's really an honest person on the right concerned with the right's failure to uphold elite standards, but that ain't the way to bet.

I've read his disclaimers.

In @hydroacetylene's defense the OP has been pretty open (both on the motte and elsewhere) about their belief in the significant "eugenic benefits" of maximizing access to abortion in states with large populations of negroes and/or Trump voters even if they have never clearly stated what those benefits are supposed to be.

Hey, you hit me back! I don't want to hear any complaining about me hitting you first!

Every political movement always thinks the outgroup hit them first, and that they're just perfect little victims who are only trying to defend themselves, and therefore allegations of hypocrisy shouldn't apply to them.

hypocrisy

It's not hypocrisy. I can both advocate that we shouldn't be punching, and that ill gotten gains from punching should be rolled back, while at the same time acknowledging that we are in fact in a punching game, and god damnit, I'm gonna punch harder than anyone if that's the game we're playing.

The alternative is just being a loser, getting punched relentlessly by an opponent that believes in punching, while they mock you for not fighting back because it's not what you believe. Or mock you for fighting back because they claim according to your own beliefs (which they don't even share) you are supposed to allow them to punch you relentlessly.

The fact that the claims are symmetric does not mean the situation on the ground is.

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