Resolved: The United States Federal Government should end its public funding for Planned Parenthood.

My opponent is a conservative, I'm a conservative. I definitely understand the pro life stance, and in fact am pro life. By the end of this debate, my inention is to show people, that funding for planned parenthood is the pro life position, and it's something both sides of the aisle should be able to agree on. At about 19 years old (I'm now 33), I had got my young girlfriend pregnant. (She was 18 at the time). We were both broke working at a fast food resteraunt, and we were also kinda naive and stupid, as are a lot of people that age. We had no ideal whatto do when she got those positive test results. The one thing we knew was that we were keeping the child. There was a planned parenthood in our community, and we got the bright ideal to go there. After all, planning parenthood, was certainly better than flying by the seat of our pants. Would you believe it, when we pulled up to the planed parenthood, there were protestors outside, and I even think they yelled some stuff at us from the sidewalk. I thought to myslf, "who in the hell whould be opposed to people planning parenthood?". Anyway, we went inside the building and told the lady at the window, we were pregnant and had no ideal what to do. We need, some form of guidance. The lady gave Tracey (pregnant girlfriend) a pregnancy test, and she tested positive. The place was extremely helpful. We got brochures to teach us about prenatal vitamins, among other things. The lady explained how to apply for WIC, so Tracey would get the proper nutrition to have a healthy birth. We learned about how to use her insurance to find a good OBGYN. Planned parenthood was a godsend for us, and I credit them for the reason we had a healthy 9 pound 6 ounce baby boy, with absolutely no problems. (despite Tracey's addiction to cigarrettes, which she never could fuly kick). It wasn't until years later we learned the place did abortions. I mean imagine that, we went there and got help and they never even told us about that option. I think our experience is probably a pretty normal one, meaning they are helping tons of families and young parents. I know space is at a premium and I used a bit, but that's okay. Planned Parenthood prevents abortions Me and Tracey despite being poor and stupid still were better off than a lot of Americans. Many other couples without the help of planned parenthood may have opted for an abortion. Planned parenthood doesn't actually recieve any federal funding for abortions, so the money doesn't realy go to that. in fact abortion only accounts for 3% of their services. A big portion of their services actually go to preventing unplanned pregnancies and by extention it prevents abortions. Below is a chart, where you can see what services will be getting less funding. http://www.factcheck.org... As you can see, my opponent is going to be pulling funding for things that prevent unintended pregnancies and therefore abortions, as well as pulling funding from cancer screenings and STD prevention. According to the Guttmacher institute 345,000 abortions were prevented by planned parenthood in 2013 alone. "Planned Parenthood is far and away the biggest provider in this space. Of the 6.7 million women who rely on public programs to pay for contraceptives, 2.4 million of them — 36 percent — do so at Planned Parenthood’s 817 clinics across the country…By providing contraceptives to millions of low-income, American women, the Guttmacher Institute (a non-profit that supports abortion rights)estimates the Title X program prevented 345,000 abortions in 2013 alone."http://www.alan.com...#We don't know what the total number of abortions prevented is, but with that much effort going into sex education, (which has been proven to prevent pregnancy) and contraceptives, we know that the immoral practice of abortions is significantly less than what it would be without planned parenthood. Funding planned parenthood just makes good economic sense We kinda have to look at one issue at a time when it comes to creating policy. Reality tells us that we're not going to massively overhaul the system. That sort of thing would require a massive revolution, coup de taut or foreign invasion. All things which are incredibly immoral with a representative government. What this leads us to, is looking at the impacts that planned parenthood funding is going to have on other issues. Once low income women have children, a lot of federal money is spent on them. WIC is heavily subsidized, food stamps, medicare and medicaid, schooling, free lunch program and a ton of other things that I could literally spend the rest of the debate listing off. According to an article at the Roosevelt Institute; "The Guttmacher Institute has found that for every dollar invested in family planning about four are saved. Why is that? Pregnancy is very expensive, as is raising a child, for women who can’t afford it. “There is no better preventative investment than family planning,” Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Ellen Chesler says. After all, the cost burden shifts to the public sector for children who are born into poverty" "But there’s another cost that all of us feel when women are denied access to family planning: “Women can’t do their jobs, create new jobs, or add to the country’s economic well-being if they can’t control their fertility,” she points out. Women make up nearly half of the workforce and help drive the U.S. economy. If we’re constantly at risk of becoming pregnant all the time, it is very difficult to do our jobs, particularly with the lack of social programs that benefit us or help with balancing work and family. “It’s as important a tool to us as education and health care,” she says" http://www.rooseveltinstitute.org... You can take every single dollar my opponent wants to cut from planned parenthood and times that by 4 to determine the extra burden he wants to place on the shoulders of tax payers. The money given to planned parenthood through title X funding creates a better economy as well as saves the taxpayers an absurd amount of money. conclusion My facts are indisputable. Funding for planned parenthood actually decreases the abortion rate, it helps the economy, it saves the taxpayers lots of money and it's the right thing to do.