During yesterday’s often surreal Congressional hearing on Planned Parenthood, we watched as the GOP proved their utter ignorance of issues related to women’s reproductive health. But one member of the panel went far and above the call of duty when it came to playing the role of moronic asshat.
Glenn Grothman is a Congressman from Wisconsin, and he began his questioning of Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards by wondering why her organization’s services were necessary because, “as a guy,” he has lots of health care options.
Yes, he actually said that.
Grothman then added that he’d surveyed all the cities in his Wisconsin that have Planned Parenthood clinics and he simply failed to understand why women didn’t just go somewhere else to receive the same care:
“As a guy, I could go to many clinics locally that have all the machines that one would need. All these clinics, as far as I know, take Medicaid dollars, so you could go to any of those clinics to get any medical service you could.”
The Milwaukee Congressman then let fly with this:
“I guess what I’m getting at is, in my opinion, if Planned Parenthood disappeared tomorrow in those towns, there would still be three or four or five clinics or hospitals providing all the medical care you would want.”
Though she no doubt felt like laughing uncontrollably at Grothman, Ms. Richards told the Congressman that other health care providers could not very easily serve Planned Parenthood’s patients — mainly because many of those clinics do not offer reproductive health care services.
To which Grothman, still lost in his own incomprehension, commented:
“It would seem to me if Planned Parenthood clinics were not around in those cities, with the exception of a couple of abortion clinics, there would be three or four other clinics available to do any women’s health or men’s health or health of any nature whatsoever. Don’t you feel that’s true?”
Again, Richards noted, without breaking into laughter or facepalming, that Wisconsin’s 22 Planned Parenthood clinics provided care to 65,000 patients last year:
“I think we’re the largest family planning provider of the network in Wisconsin, so that’s pretty hard to replace.”
There are none so blind as those, like Congressman Grothman, who refuse to see.
