Rita Diller is the National Director of American Life League’s Stop Planned Parenthood project, which is to say that Ms. Diller is highly invested in denying healthcare to other women because those women might possibly be caring  for their bodies in ways in which Ms. Diller doesn’t approve. As Planned Parenthood celebrates it’s 95th birthday this week, Ms. Diller is getting ladywood over the fact that PP is closing facilities, making it more difficult for women to get the low-cost healthcare at a time when it is desperately needed by everyone. Rita seems particularly proud of the damage she is inflicting upon women in her native Texas:

In Hidalgo County, Texas, Planned Parenthood recently shut down facilities in Rio Grande City, San Carlos, Progreso and Mission, where government funding was providing over 80 percent of its income. The cluster of closures brings to 12 the number of Texas Planned Parenthood facilities that have either shut down or are scheduled to be shut down since the state legislature cut at least $58 million from the abortion giant over the next two years. In addition, in March, Planned Parenthood of Central Texas closed the only two facilities it operates outside of Waco-one in Groesbeck and one in Marlin.

As Andrea Grimes pointed out, this turned out to be awesome news for her own health needs:

…I sat in front of Rep. Flynn, in his Austin office next to his model airplanes and elect-Dan-Flynn gum, and told him how I’d lost my job and my health insurance and needed regular, affordable pap smears to keep an eye on my pre-cancerous cervical dysplasia. I told him Planned Parenthood could provide low-cost paps, breast exams and contraceptives to keep me healthy despite my lack of insurance, and I believed they should continue to be funded by government family planning dollars. He scoffed, waving around a handful of papers—spreadsheets and maps, it looked like—and told me that Planned Parenthood was nothing but a tax-evading abortion machine (he knew because he used to be a bank examiner and had heard some things from some people) and there were so many other options besides Planned Parenthood in Texas. I should and could go to one of those, he told me, so we could spread some of the wealth around to these smaller providers. It would be very easy, he said.

[...]

…I thought, I’ll play this game. If it turns out I was wrong—and I really thought maybe I could be, because how could it seriously happen that “pro-life” Texans didn’t want me to get cancer screenings?—I would be the first to admit that you can take Planned Parenthood out of the equation and still find easily accessible, low-cost reproductive health care in a sprawling metropolitan area like Dallas. But I wasn’t wrong. I was, maddeningly, right. Considering the rate at which conservatives are defunding family planning in my state, and for that matter, across the country, I’m very sorry about that. All of this is an ideological, not fiscally conservative, battle. After all, family planning saves taxpayers $4 for every $1 spent. But I was trying to work around family planning dollars, since conservatives seem to think they go straight to gleeful baby-killing cocktail hours, and stick with straight-up FQHC’s. If they’re lucky, Dallas women will be told what I was told: an appointment at an anti-choicer-approved FQHC might be available in May if I called back in three weeks—at a location two cities away and five miles from the closest bus stop.

Or women can call Planned Parenthood, like I did, at lunch time on a Friday, and be told that an afternoon appointment including a full pelvic and breast exam is available that same day for about $100 at a location a few yards from a major public transportation hub that I could easily reach in a half-hour or so.

Of course,  Ms Diller would tell you that all Planned Parenthood does all the live-long day is abort, abort, abort, nothing but abortion … except not:

Planned Parenthood calculates the numbers by services provided, rather than dollars spent. In a fact sheet last updated in March 2011, the group lists the following breakdown of its services:

Contraception (including reversible contraception, emergency contraception, vasectomies and tubal sterilizations): 4,009,549 services

Sexually transmitted infections testing and treatment: 3,955,916 services

Cancer screening and prevention: 1,830,811 services

Other women’s health services (including pregnancy tests and prenatal care): 1,178,369 services

Abortions: 332,278 procedures

Miscellaneous (including primary care and adoption referrals): 76,977

Total services: 11,383,900

By this tally, abortions accounted for just under 3 percent of the procedures Planned Parenthood provided in 2009, which is the most recent year for which the group is reporting statistics.

And you would think that Ms. Diller would would not have a problem with Planned Parenthood dispensing contraceptives because it might prevent some of those abortions, right? Well no.

ELAINE TYLER MAY planned the release of her new book in celebration of the 50th anniversary of FDA approval of the birth control pill to coincide with Mother’s Day 2010, and her article (“How the pill changed motherhood,” Opinion, May 9) connected the pill with better mothering.

The truth is, the pill kills families, the pill kills women, the pill kills babies and the pill kills the environment.

Since the pill was approved as a contraceptive in 1960 by the FDA, the institution of marriage has become endangered. The number of unmarried cohabitating couples has increased tenfold, from 439,000 to 4.2 million. Divorce rates have soared. Births to unmarried women have tripled. Some 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock each year.

May rightly points out that women in the workplace are left with very little time to care for their children. In 1960, 70 percent of moms of childbearing age stayed home and 30 percent worked outside the home. Following the introduction of the pill, women flocked into the workplace.

Today, the numbers are reversed, with 30 percent staying home and 70 percent working outside the home. Many mothers who want to stay home with their children are forced into the workplace to make ends meet in a society that has built its economy around the two-paycheck family, thanks largely to the pill.

Because the pill means fewer children soooo …. families need more money to afford to  … not have children whom they won’t need to feed, clothe, and shelter which is …. expensive. Or something.

And Rita Diller has dedicated her life to the children

Rita has more than 26 years experience across the spectrum of pro-life work, including 12 years as Respect Life Director for the Diocese of Amarillo, working closely with Bishop John Yanta.

Oooo, look, here’s Rita (on the left and there’s Bishop John Yanta stuck in the middle)

This Bishop John Yanta:

Some parishioners vented their displeasure at meetings with Bishop Yanta. Others expressed their anger in less public ways, one longtime diocesan member said.

“Now that this has all come out, there’s a lot of people that are really upset about it because the bishop did know, and nothing was done about it, and children were exposed to these priests,” said Cris Parra of Amarillo, a music director at several parishes.

“They are just not happy campers about it,” Ms. Parra said.

Bishop Yanta acknowledged that people’s faith in the church has been shaken. But he predicted that any bitterness would not linger.

“There’s something about us Catholics,” he said. “We’ve been through everything through the last 20 centuries. When we have to suffer, it seems that we get recommitted, more committed than ever.”

Bishop Yanta, 70, offered no apologies for his secretiveness, saying he believed it was in line with dictates of church law that require bishops to protect the reputations of priests as well as ensuring due process.

“The communication of the truth is not a universal right,” he said.

[...]

Bishop Matthiesen, who gave way to Bishop Yanta in 1997 after leading the Amarillo Diocese for 17 years, said he regretted his lack of candor about six priests he hired from treatment programs in New Mexico and Maryland between 1988 and 1995.
But he has had no change of heart about putting the priests back into parish work.

“I personally have not regretted taking them,” Bishop Matthiesen said.

[...]

Bishop Yanta said he heard about the “program priests” hired by Bishop Matthiesen before he was installed in Amarillo in March 1997. He had previously been auxiliary bishop in the San Antonio Archdiocese.

“I didn’t get a good night’s sleep here for several months,” Bishop Yanta said, “because my Number 1 preoccupation was just to make sure that we were providing [the priests] with the very best care and to protect the children and the youth of the diocese.”

After consulting with a variety of experts, he said, he decided to keep the priests on the job with even stricter requirements for their after-care.

Bishop Yanta said his decision was based on advice that priests might accuse him of violating their due process or reputational rights guaranteed under the canon laws of the Roman Catholic Church.

“They’ll take you to Rome at the drop of a hat, as we say.”

[...]

Bishop Yanta, a staunch opponent of abortion rights who was convicted in 1993 for trespassing at a San Antonio women’s clinic, was one of a handful of bishops who voted against the sexual abuse policy adopted in Dallas.

“I was for the charter in principle, definitely,” he said. “But I thought we should have come up with something a little more flexible for those cases of a long distant past.”

Nonetheless, he said, he did not wait for the meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Dallas to begin calling in “program priests” to discuss their future.

Priests and busybodies like Rita Diller: if they’re not in your uterus, they’re in your kids.

Bless their hearts…