By Scott Tibbs, October 23, 2015
Note: I delivered this speech at the Bloomington City Council meeting on October 21, 2015.
My name is Scott Tibbs and I am a write-in candidate for Bloomington City Council, at-large.
For the last thirteen years, I have been making the point that Planned Parenthood's requests for a handout from this City Council do not have anything to do with need or providing reproductive health care but that those requests are instead a request for a political endorsement from city government. Tonight, by passing this resolution supporting Bloomington's local abortion mill, you will prove that I have been right all along.
First, councilor Dorothy Granger is a clinic escort for Planned Parenthood. Because of her connection to PP, Councilor Granger needs to recuse herself from this vote. She should have recused herself from previous votes to fund Planned Parenthood. While there is no legal conflict of interest here, it nonetheless creates an appearance of impropriety for a Planned Parenthood clinic escort to sponsor and vote for a resolution supporting Planned Parenthood or to give the money entrusted to her by the voters to that organization.
You are endorsing Planned Parenthood despite a series of grisly and horrific videos that expose Planned Parenthood selling the body parts of aborted babies, and sifting through the mutilated corpses of those babies to find usable organs. Worse yet, you are endorsing Planned Parenthood despite the fact that an inspection by the Indiana State Department of Health revealed numerous serious and disturbing violations at the so-called "clinic" here in Bloomington. Would these disturbing practices still be going on had Planned Parenthood not been caught and reprimanded by the state?
If the nine Democrats on the City Council want to endorse Planned Parenthood, that would be wholly appropriate - if you did it as private citizens or as candidates for office. But speaking as a legislative body and speaking for the entire city is simply wrong, especially after the body parts selling scandal that erupted over the summer and outraged many all across the nation and in our community. I encourage you to table this resolution.
