Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) has erased from the Congressional record his false claim that abortions comprise 90% of Planned Parenthood’s services. And yes, that is intended to be a factual statement.
During the recent budget debate, Kyl made that false claim about Planned Parenthood on the Senate floor, thus entering it into the Congressional record. But after taking a lot of flak for that act of huge hyperbole, Kyl had it stricken from the official text.
According to the Library of Congress website, members of Congress are entitled to, “edit the transcript of their floor remarks before publication in the daily record or the permanent record.”
On April 8, Kyl said that, “If you want an abortion you go to Planned Parenthood and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” Following the change, the Congressional Record now reads, “If you want an abortion you go to Planned Parenthood and that is what Planned Parenthood does.”
Soon after Kyl delivered his false claim, critics pointed out that abortions actually make up only about 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services. Kyl’s office then issued a clarification, saying his claim was not intended to be a factual statement.
Yet that only prompted a bigger backlash over the statement. Stephen Colbert repeatedly mocked Kyl on his show, and peppered Twitter with false statements about Kyl — such as, “For the past ten years, Jon Kyl has been two children in a very convincing Jon Kyl suit” — all tagged with the disclaimer that they were not intended to be factual statement either.
So even though Kyl has had his remarks removed from the official legislative record, his legacy as Archduke Ferdinand’s assassin and the saboteur of the Apollo 13 space mission lives on.
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