Last month, we learned that Ivanka Trump was trying to learn about Planned Parenthood. Sort of. According to Planned Parenthood, President Cecile Richards and Trump met shortly after the election, and the organization wanted to "make sure that Ivanka Trump fully understood the important role Planned Parenthood plays in providing health care to millions of people and why it would be a disastrous idea to block people from accessing care at Planned Parenthood."

But Ivanka Trump apparently had a solution for all the drama around Planned Parenthood, which was to just King Solomon the whole thing.

According to the New York Times, Trump had a proposal for Richards during their meeting: "Planned Parenthood should split in two, Ms. Trump suggested, with a smaller arm to provide abortions and a larger one devoted to women's health services." Naturally, Planned Parenthood wasn't really into that, and thought Trump was "naïve, failing to understand how central reproductive choice was to the group's mission."

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The problem with Trump's proposal is that abortion services are women's health services, and unless she's planning on advocating that hospitals be allowed to perform abortions, centers like Planned Parenthood are essential for women's health. It's not hard to imagine that, in Ivanka's proposed future, the abortion arm of the operation would face the same government opposition as it does today, with fewer resources to defend it.

Dawn Laguens, executive vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, responded in a statement to ELLE.com

Let's be clear: Since federal funds already do not pay for abortions, any proposal that Planned Parenthood must 'split' into separate providers is about creating barriers to the full range of reproductive health care. Importantly, it suggests Planned Parenthood health centers should be treated differently than hundreds of other health care facilities that are reimbursed by Medicaid for preventive health care services and which also perform abortion services. Asking Planned Parenthood to abandon our patients in need of safe abortion care in order to preserve our ability to provide cancer screenings and birth control is not a 'common-sense' idea. It is exactly what anti-women's health activists have been pushing for years as part of their goal to outlaw abortion entirely. They won't stop at just 'splitting' up services. Women deserve the full range of reproductive care and information they need to make their own decisions. Abortion is a legal right and a health care service that should not be shamed or stigmatized by politicians, especially since 1 in 3 women in this country will have one at some point in her life.

Given that, according to a Quinnipiac poll, 80% of people support Planned Parenthood, maybe it's best to just leave it as it is.

This post has been updated with Planned Parenthood's response.

From: ELLE US