MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

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REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D), COLORADO: Well, the first thing is, Chris, is that there is no federal funding of abortion. That"s the Hyde amendment. That"s still law. And that law remains. I don"t like it, but it"s the law of the land.

When the Pence--when Mike Pence does an amendment to cut off funding for Planned Parenthood, he"s cutting off funding for almost a million Pap smears, for over 800,000 breast exams, and for family planning and birth control. And that"s what he"s cutting off.

You know, Planned Parenthood provides services. In some states like Montana, they are the only family planning and women"s health clinic for hundreds of miles. So, what he"s doing, really, under the guise of taking away money for abortion, he"s really taking away...

MATTHEWS: OK.

DEGETTE: ... women"s health care services.

MATTHEWS: Marjorie Dannenfelser, thank you for joining us.

MARJORIE DANNENFELSER, PRESIDENT, SUSAN B. ANTHONY LIST: Thank you.

MATTHEWS: What"s not accurate about that?

DANNENFELSER: What is not accurate is that Planned Parenthood is the number-one abortion provider in the nation.

MATTHEWS: No, that"s not what--no, that"s not what--no.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: What"s not accurate about what she just said?

DANNENFELSER: Are you going to let me answer? Are you going to let me answer? What--I"m going to answer the question.

MATTHEWS: No, answer it now.

DANNENFELSER: Last year--last year, Planned Parenthood required all of its clinics to provide abortion services, or it could be in the Planned Parenthood umbrella.

OK, I don"t know about you want, but I have got teenagers, and I know that money is fungible. I know that when you give a lot of money to a corporation, it can shift its money around and do whatever it wants to with it, just like our teenagers.

DEGETTE: No.

DANNENFELSER: And that is exactly what is going on.

DEGETTE: No.

DANNENFELSER: But the issue that"s happening now is, we have found out--we have known for very long that Planned Parenthood is not safe for women. And now videos coming out have shown that it is a willing partner with sex traffickers.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: OK. Right.

DANNENFELSER: And that"s why now it"s a viable--that"s why it"s viable now, Chris. We wouldn"t have been talking about this a year ago.

MATTHEWS: You know, the problem with your argument is that, you know, I have heard for years the case for aid to transportation for kids to go to parochial school, and they are only paying for the bus trip. And people who have been opposed to that would say, oh, but it"s fungible. If you pay for the bus trip, that"s money that would have gone for schoolbooks.

DANNENFELSER: Chris, let me ask you...

MATTHEWS: You"re really helping Catholic education.

DANNENFELSER: ... have you seen the videos?

MATTHEWS: So, this thing works both ways.

DANNENFELSER: No, you haven"t seen the videos. And I you know have kids.

I want to ask, Diana, if you"re really for women --

MATTHEWS: OK. This is why I don"t want to go here. What I want to do is stick to the facts. Here"s the factual question here--let"s go to the fact. Let"s go back to this question of the Hyde Amendment. The Hyde amendment says federal money can"t be spent for abortion.

You don"t like it but you support the law, right, Congresswoman? We have a law.

REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D), COLORADO: Exactly.

MATTHEWS: What Mr. Spencer (ph) has done here, in fact, with the backing of people like Chris Smith, is to go beyond that and say, here"s a way to kill Planned Parenthood. My problem with people like this and I completely support the law here, like you"re supposed to in America, and the law says no federal funding.

And my question, I"ll try one more time with Mrs. Dannenfelser. What about the issue of if you don"t support birth control aren"t you in effect--and Planned Parenthood does a lot of work on birth control--aren"t you, in effect, creating situations where women will choose abortion because they have unwanted pregnancies?

DANNENFELSER: The reason we had a vote today --

MATTHEWS: You can"t answer that. What is this about?

DANNENFELSER: I"m going to answer your question.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No, answer it in a fact. I know what an answer sounds like.

DANNENFELSER: I"m going to answer the question. And if you are a trustworthy provider of these services, then we would have no argument. Planned Parenthood has proved itself to be an untrustworthy, unsafe place for women. And if you would look at those videos, you would know what I was talking about.

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you a question, just back to--one more last try and this is why I can"t always deal with advocates. You don"t try to help understand something. I want to understand this issue.

Doesn"t Planned Parenthood give you birth control advice? Doesn"t it help you avoid having an unwanted pregnancy, Mrs. Dannenfelser? Isn"t that one of the roles it provides?

DANNENFELSER: It provides services and, you know, it provides--it is a woman-focused, purportedly women-focused organization. It has proved itself to be. And if you really want to know, Chris--

MATTHEWS: I asked you. That"s how I let you I want to know, I asked.

DANNENFELSER: -- about the facts, you should be looking--you should be looking at these videos and finding out what they are willing to do to put young girls back out on street. You don"t want to know. You don"t want to know.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No, I"m asking you a question. Does the Planned Parenthood--

DANNENFELSER: You don"t want to know the facts.

MATTHEWS: Can I saw question one more last time? Does Planned Parenthood provide birth control advice?

DANNENFELSER: Yes, it does.

MATTHEWS: To avoid unwanted pregnancies.

DANNENFELSER: That"s not a problem. Yes, it does.

MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you.

Congresswoman DeGette, let"s watch more of Congresswoman Speier because she"s had a personal experience for this. Let"s take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D), CALIFORNIA: To think that we"re here tonight debating this issue when the American people, if they are listening are scratching their heads and wondering what does this have to do with me getting a job? What does this have to do with reducing the deficit? And the answer is: nothing at all. There is a vendetta against Planned Parenthood.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: Well, do you think that"s true, Congresswoman?

DEGETTE: Well, I think that--first of all, they"ve been trying to cut the funding for Planned Parenthood for years. So, these videos are disturbing and we"ve told Planned Parenthood they need to take care of any practices like this.

But the truth is that Jackie Speier is exactly right. Right now, we have about 9 percent unemployment in this country and many low-income and unemployed women are going Planned Parenthood because they can get accurate and good-priced health care and pregnancy prevention information and pap smears and everything else that women does need. And so, when you cut that, you"re not cutting abortions--what you"re cutting is health care for women who are unemployed and I guess that is the perfect question.

When we have so many unemployed women in this country, why are we once again debating these culture wars? There"s no federal funding that goes to abortion either through Planned Parenthood or anybody else.

MATTHEWS: Last word to you, Marjorie Dannenfelser.

DANNENFELSER: The number one provider of abortion in America is Planned Parenthood. There"s no question that this federal funding supports that service. And the one area of bipartisan consensus in the health care bill that was the last hold out was that taxpayers do not want to fund abortion services or be connected in any way.

On top of this, we should only be funding organizations that truly serve women, and if you take the time to actually look at what"s going on, you would see they are not serving women by putting young girls back out on the street after getting their services which are abortion or any other contraception or anything. There"s a corporate culture that"s the problem. That"s why they are a target.

MATTHEWS: OK. Thank you for coming on. I wish we weren"t fighting about this. I think it"s too important.

But, anyway, thank you very much, Marjorie Dannenfelser, for coming on.

DANNENFELSER: Thanks, Chris.

MATTHEWS: And thank you very much, Diana DeGette.

I tried to get both points of view but I like to narrow the discussion a little bit sometimes in the show, and not get back to the old arguments.

Up next: the preview of my new documentary about Bill Clinton. It airs Monday night at 10:00 Eastern. It"s a hell of a thing to watch. I think you"ll be surprised, in fact, you"ll be thrilled, I think, by watching this for an hour. I called "President of the World." That"s our title, because no other former president of any country has ever been able to go out and have global reach and the historic mission of that man we"re looking at.

This is HARDBALL, only on MSNBC.

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