By Scott Tibbs, October 21, 2015
In one of my answers to the League of Women Voters Keys to The Candidates questions, I said that "the city council needs to stop waging a culture war" with their repeated votes to force the citizens of Bloomington to donate to Planned Parenthood. I have made the point many times over the years that these donations are a political statement rather than a legitimate use of social service funding. On Wednesday, the city council will prove me right.
The city council's resolution in support of Planned Parenthood represents a tone-deaf escalation of their culture war. Hundreds of people have attended the protests against Planned Parenthood and the county council's vote to give corporate welfare to PP was the largest show of opposition such a vote has ever had, especially given that there was only two days notice with the county council deceptively trying to sneak the vote under the radar.
But the Democrats simply do not care. They are determined to use city government as a tool to wage a culture war and ram a pro-abortion political agenda down the citizens throats. The fact that this comes after the national Planned Parenthood was caught selling the body parts of aborted babies is disturbing enough.
But the fact that the city council continues to fund Planned Parenthood and make shameless political endorsements of our local abortion "clinic" after the Indiana State Department of Health found multiple serious violations at Bloomington's PP "clinic" makes this resolution even worse. This is a blind political agenda.
This shows more than ever why we need a dissenting voice on the Bloomington City Council, especially with the monolithic and tone-deaf support for Planned Parenthood. It is time to stop abusing the Hopkins social services fund by giving money to an organization that does not need it and denying money to deserving organizations by turning it into a political cudgel instead of a legitimate means of helping the needy in our city.
