Republican and Conservative political analysis and commentary

CNN is reporting that Ann Romney, the wife of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, donated $150 in 1994 to Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider. The disclosure comes as rival GOP candidate Rudy Giuliani is dealing with the impact of the disclosure that Giuliani has made repeated donations to Planned Parenthood, the nation's leading advocate for and provider of abortions.

It was the second time this week that a GOP presidential campaign found itself involved in flap over long-ago donations to Planned Parenthood, a group which offers abortions at its affiliated health clinics and advocates for abortion rights.

But "because it was so long ago, Mrs. Romney has no information about the circumstances of the donation," said spokesman Kevin Madden, who noted that the former Massachusetts governor and his wife made a much larger and more recent donation - $15,000 -- to an anti-abortion group, Massachusetts Citizens for Life, last November.

The Romney and Giuliani disclosures are different in a few key ways. First, in Giuliani's case he made the donations, while in Romney's case the donation was made by his wife. Second, Giuliani made several donations, donated more, and donated to Planned Parenthood more recently than Mrs. Romney made her one donation.

But the biggest difference is that Giuliani's donations serve to underscore the pro-choice position which he still, more or less, publicly endorses, while Romney's wife's donation merely underscores the pro-choice position that Romney says he more recently moved away from. The couple's $15,000 donation to the anti-abortion group Massachusetts Citizens for Life last fall stands in stark contrast to her $150 check to Planned Parenthood 13 years ago.

Giuliani is asking pro-life Republicans to trust that he'll appoint "strict constructionist" judges that will lead to Roe v. Wade being overturned, when his entire political history on the issue is one of support for abortion rights, support he evidenced personally with his series of donations to Planned Parenthood. (Giuliani's claim that he gave money to the organization to support its provision of its customers with information about adoption is silly given that Planned Parenthood refers customers to adoption only slightly more often than General Motors sends customers to Honda.)

Giuliani's asking GOP pro-lifers to take a big leap of faith.

Romney is, too, but not quite as big. Romney has admitted to a conversion on the abortion issue, something that religious conservatives understand, and his political and personal actions lately provide some evidence that his conversion is real.

The edge goes to Romney on this one - but just barely.

A side note: I couldn't help but notice that CNN's story appeared to try to downplay Planned Parenthood's abortion business, perhaps in an effort to make Giuliani's adoption spin sound more believable.

CNN wrote:

Tuesday, in an appearance on conservative commentator Laura Ingraham's radio show, Giuliani said the donations to Planned Parenthood were not inconsistent with his personal opposition to abortion because the group "makes information available" on other options available to pregnant women, including adoption.

"If there is going to be a choice, there are organizations that are going to give people information about that choice," he said. "I just as strongly support the idea that a woman should have information about adoption."

In addition to abortions, Planned Parenthood offers health and gynecological care, birth control, pregnancy testing, adoption information and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases at 860 affiliated health centers operating under its name, according to the group's Web site.

In 2005, about 265,000 abortion procedures were performed at Planned Parenthood facilities, about 3 percent of the patient services it provided that year, according to statistics posted on its site.

CNN wants you to think of abortion as just a small part of what Planned Parenthood does: "about 3 percent of the patient services it provided" in 2005. Okay. But CNN doesn't tell you that Planned Parenthood referred only 1,414 patients to adoption services providers in 2004 - out of 2,933,101 total clients. That same year, Planned Parenthood performed 255,015 abortions. In 2004, one out of every 11.5 clients at Planned Parenthood got an abortion while only one out of every 2,074 clients was referred to an adoption agency.

Adoption is not even mentioned on Planned Parenthood's website home page. The website's abortion info page includes links to other pages with "up-to-date information about choosing abortion, first-trimester options, risks and side effects, various procedures, and information about the thousands of fake clinics that have been set up to frighten women away from choosing abortion." The website's adoption info page has no such additional information and links.

Those "fake clinics" that Planned Parenthood refers to are, of course, crisis pregnancy clinics that help women dealing with unwanted pregnancies without abortion, often by connecting them with adoption agencies. Planned Parenthood hates crisis pregnancy centers, which they say are illegitimate because they do not provide "abortion services or referrals."

Giving money to Planned Parenthood to support adoption is like, well, giving money to the Democratic National Committee to support Republican candidates. If CNN is going to report Giuliani's adoption spin of his Planned Parenthood donations, it ought to at least put them into complete perspective.