President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Boehner, in the final hours before a possible federal government shutdown, agreed on the amount of cuts in the belated 2011 budget. One obstacle remained: the GOP bid to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funding.

Reid called that GOP social ideology. Sen. Schumer referred to it as a goal-line stand against women’s health. A Wall Street Journal article reported that the president took a firm stand against the GOP demand even if it meant a shutdown.

Boehner finally agreed to the budget cuts after receiving an agreement that the Senate would vote on a bill to defund Planned Parenthood (PP). An earlier victory restored the prohibition against federal funding of abortions in the District of Columbia.

During the debate, supporters of PP claimed that federal funds are used only for services provided to women other than abortion. But money receipts are fungible.

PP performed 332,278 abortions in 2009 — one every 95 seconds. The WSJ reported that PP’s own numbers show that 97 percent of pregnant women treated received an abortion. Only 3 percent received nonabortion services such as adoption or prenatal care.

Google Margaret Sanger, founder of PP, and you’ll learn that she was an eugenist, one interested in controlling procreation in order to improve hereditary characteristics. Women’s health was not the primary driving force in her thinking. One quote of hers is shocking: “The most merciful thing a large family does to one of its infant members is kill it.” It is difficult to imagine her making that statement considering she was the sixth child in a family of 11 children.

Gene Jacobs

Pinehurst