Planned Parenthood Protest Draws Heated Debate
CHICAGO (WBBM) -- Planned Parenthood held a midday rally in the Loop to protest the recent vote in the House of Representatives that would bar all federal funding for the organization, which provides health care to poor women, including abortions.
Anti-abortion activists tried to out-shout those who turned out to support Planned Parenthood, which calls the House vote "the most dangerous legislative assault on women's health in Planned Parenthood's 95-year history."
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Carole Bright is the CEO and president of Planned Parenthood of Illinois.
"The fact is that no federal funds can be used for abortions," she said. "So all of these funds that are being denied to Planned Parenthood are for primary and life-threatening basic health care. None of it is for abortion care."
While the funding cut passed the GOP-controlled House, it faces a less certain future in the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority.
Off to the side of the demonstration, John Janssen held a graphic blown-up photograph of a fetus, the sort you see at anti-abortion demonstrations.
He compared it to the open-casket photograph of Emmett Till, the Chicago teen who was brutally killed by a group of white men in Mississippi the 1950s.
"People say the brutality of what racism had done," he said. "That really is what kick-started the civil rights movement in many ways."
And he thinks a blow-up of an aborted fetus will do the same for his movement.
