This month, someone made a donation to Planned Parenthood in Republican State Senator Steve Fitzgerald’s name ― and the Kansas lawmaker was not happy about it.
On March 10, Planned Parenthood’s Great Plains clinic tweeted out a photo of a letter Sen. Fitzgerald wrote to the women’s health organization. “It is with great dismay that I received your letter that a donation was made in my ‘honor’ to your heinous organization,” Sen. Fitzgerald wrote.
The state senator went on to liken Planned Parenthood ― an international nonprofit organization that provides healthcare to millions of women and men ― to a Nazi concentration camp.
“This is as bad ― or worse ― as having one’s name associated with Dachau,” Sen. Fitzgerald wrote, referring to the first Nazi concentration camp created in 1933. “Shame on your organization and shame on anyone that would attempt to blacken my name in this manner.”
In an interview with The Kansas City Star on Monday, Sen. Fitzgerald stood by his original comments.
“It was either send them that or ignore it,” Sen. Fitzgerald told The Star. “I figured, I don’t want my name associated as a donation to Planned Parenthood, in my name, to go on un-denounced by me.”
When asked if Sen. Fitzgerald was implying that Planned Parenthood is actually worse than the Nazis, the state senator replied: “Oh, yeah,” adding that the Nazis “ought to be incensed by the comparison.”
Many Twitter users were understandably very upset with Sen. Fitzgerald’s comments.
Spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Great Plains told The Star that they’ve see an uptick in donations in Sen. Fitzgerald’s name since they tweeted his letter.
“It’s this kind of inflammatory language that adds to the shame and stigma of safe legal abortion,” Lee-Gilmore said. “The state of Kansas has much bigger issues to be dealing with, and this is just an unacceptable attack on women’s right to choose.”
Head over to The Kansas City Star to read the rest of Sen. Fitzgerald’s comments.
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Source: HuffPost Black Voices