Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood rips Paul Ryan's call for higher U.S. birth rate

By Douglas Ernst - The Washington Times - Friday, December 15, 2017

The head of Planned Parenthood is not happy with House Speaker Paul Ryan over his call for a higher U.S. birth rate.

Cecile Richards took to social media on Friday to blast the idea that male lawmakers should use their bully pulpit to discuss the national birth rate. Mr. Ryan told reporters on Thursday that entitlement programs like Social Security require more bodies than Americans are providing for the accounting to work.

“I did my part, but we need to have higher birth rates in this country,” the Wisconsin lawmaker said. “Baby boomers are retiring, and we have fewer people following them in the work force. We have something like a 90 percent increase in the retirement population in America, but only a 19 percent increase in the working population in American. So what do we have to do? Be smarter, more efficient, more technology — still going to need more people.”

Ms. Richards, whose organization has performed abortions since its inception in 1916, blasted the Republican while linking to a Think Progress piece with alternative suggestions.

If more members of Congress could get pregnant, maybe they wouldn’t tell the rest of us when and why to get pregnant. https://t.co/pqFf7Srlkl
— Cecile Richards (@CecileRichards) December 15, 2017

“If more members of Congress could get pregnant, maybe they wouldn’t tell the rest of us when and why to get pregnant,” she tweeted Friday.

The Think Progress article recommended increased immigration as a means of funding social programs.

“There’s an obvious solution to the problem that Ryan completely ignores — allowing more immigrants into the country to fill the jobs being vacated by retiring baby boomers,” the nonprofit organization’s Aaron Rupar said.

Mr. Ryan’s calls on behalf of House Republicans echo those of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who said this week that he would not vote for a Republican tax bill that failed to increase a $1,100 refundable child tax credit.

“Can only support bill if % of the 2K #ChildTaxCredit available to #workingclass parents is increased to % meaningfully higher than 55%,”Mr. Rubio tweeted Friday.