Sandra Fluke Lies About Paul Ryan

Sandra Fluke, the latest 15 minute of fame heroine for liberals and Democrats, has come out of her Twitter shell somewhat. Instead of using her account to just promote her latest appearance on television, she has actually engaged some people on Twitter.

I was glad to see it because there was a line in her speech about Paul Ryan and emergency rooms that made no sense. She said:

It would be an America in which you have a new vice president who co-sponsored a bill that would allow pregnant women to die preventable deaths in our emergency rooms.

I had no clue what she was talking about, but on Twitter, she said the following in response to the above:

@dadavis65 huffingtonpost.com/human-rights-w…

— Sandra Fluke (@SandraFluke) September 8, 2012

The link to the Huffington Post piece reads in part:

“The misnamed Protect Life Act is about allowing women to die if they need an emergency abortion,” said Meghan Rhoad, women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “It is a vicious attack on women’s rights and on the most basic right to life.”

This is of course, a lie. I’ll explain why shortly. Fluke also threw out this tweet:

@pleaseobama @slublog Actually, Ryan co-sponsored bill that would have outlawed common forms of birth control.

— Sandra Fluke (@SandraFluke) September 8, 2012

This is also a lie.

You see, people like Sandra Fluke, Meghan Rhoad and others of their ilk equate federal funding with legality or the existence of something.

The Protect Life Act does not prevent a hospital from performing an abortion if it was medically necessary. What the bill does state is the following:

Amends the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) to prohibit federal funds from being to used to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion services.

That’s it. All it was doing was extending already existing law to cover the PPACA. From the same site:

(Currently, federal funds cannot be used for abortion services and plans receiving federal funds must keep federal funds segregated from any funds for abortion services.) Requires any qualified health benefit plan offered through an Exchange that includes coverage for abortions to also offer a qualified health benefit plan through the Exchange that is identical in every respect except that it does not cover abortions.

Similarly, Fluke’s accusation that Ryan supported a bill that would have “outlawed common forms of birth control” is a lie in the same vein.

Ryan has favored contraception being covered under Medicaid and he has supported the expenditure of $300 million in additional funding for those that do no qualify for Medicaid.

So what is Fluke talking about? She’s talking about a bill that would have prevented any Title X funding from going America’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.

It’s not surprising to see liberals play this game. They did the same when they accused President Bush of “banning embryonic stem cell research” when he did nothing of sort. As was the case with these two examples, Bush merely banned any federal funding to be used on such research.

The media should not be allowing people to get away with such brazen lies, but alas, they don’t.

I guess Politifact is going to fact check Sandra Fluke some other time.