Senator Liz Mathis (D-Hiawatha) asked the chamber to get over the “charade.”
“You hear the words Planned Parenthood and you run. You cut. You shut your minds off to whatever good they have done in your communities,” she said. “You hear the words Planned Parenthood and you think evil. Let’s just stop the charade. You are targeting them in this bill.”
Mathis expressed frustration that Republicans were targeting Planned Parenthood’s sex education work for “something else they do.”
Sen. Mark Costello (R-Imogene) responded to that.
“I just felt when you said ‘something else they do,’ when you’re talking about abortion, it’s not just something else,” Costello said. “It’s a terrible thing. It’s a terrible thing to those of us who view an unborn baby as a baby and it’s a little offensive to say ‘it’s something else they do.'”