Rick Sanchez taked Michele Bachmann to task for her abortion field trips nonsense.
SANCHEZ: One of the things that we like to do in this segment is shine a light on lawmakers who gaffe or don't exactly tell the truth all the time. We begin "Fotos" today with Michele Bachmann.
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BACHMANN: The bill orders these clinics protect patient privacy in student records. What does that mean? It means that parents will never know what kind of counsel and treatment that their children are receiving.
And, as a matter of fact, the bill goes on to say what's going to go on. Comprehensive primary health services, physicals, treatment of minor, acute, chronic medical conditions, referrals to follow up for specialty care -- is that abortion? Does that mean that someone's 13-year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go on home on the school bus that night? Mom and dad are never the wiser.
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SANCHEZ: If could, if could -- Bachmann is a Republican, by the way. And to be clear, we looked into this. Nothing that she is alleging in that sound bite you just heard is actually true, nothing. We checked.
School-based health clinics, or as Bachmann terms them, "sex clinics," have been around for some 30 years in the United States. And as far as we've been able to discover, not one of them has ever referred a student to an abortion provider without the knowledge of a parent, never happened. The actual bill that Bachmann is citing stipulates that school-based health clinics comply with all federal, state and local laws governing parental notification and parental consent.
So, why would she say that? She is right, by the way, that as of last Wednesday, none of the three bills explicitly ban school-based health clinics from referring students to abortion clinics. And for the record, neither does it ban kids from being shipped to Mars, either.
There is one other note: there is now an amendment to specifically bar all public school-based health funds from being used for any such medical needs.
