Planned Parenthood has found itself back in the spotlight in recent weeks, as Congress debates a healthcare bill which would cut off nearly $500 million of its taxpayer funding. This, of course, is not sitting well among its many defenders, who argue taking such a step would rob women of vital healthcare.
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards, recent honoree Hillary Clinton, and countless Members of Congress have all repeatedly assured Americans that Planned Parenthood does prenatal care and treatment, pap smears, cancer screenings, and other “health services.” They are convinced Planned Parenthood does some good. Yet, as documented in their annual reports and by direct statements of their employees, Planned Parenthood provides less than two percent of U. S. breast exams, less than one percent of pap tests, less than two percent of cancer screenings for women, zero mammograms, and almost no prenatal care.
For more than four decades, Planned Parenthood, NARAL, and others have characterized abortion as a matter of choice. And yet, their literature, advertisements, talking points, and other marketing materials always promote abortion and abortion alone. In fact, some of their literature pushes women away from adoption as a matter of choice, calling it an inhumane procedure despite there being more qualified adoptive families than there are aborted children. Parenting as an option is discouraged, and women are often told it is an act of love to terminate the life of a child considered imperfect, especially those with Down syndrome, for example. An unplanned pregnancy quickly becomes an “unwanted” one.
Never, it seems, does Planned Parenthood or any other abortion provider celebrate the choice of life. Instead, they vilify men like Ryan Bomberger — whose mom, after rape, chose to allow him to live and be adopted into a multi-cultural family of fifteen. They vilify women like Rebecca Kiessling — whose birth mom, abducted at knifepoint and raped, chose life for her daughter.
When does choice become coercion? When women are denied the freedom to choose. Planned Parenthood has deliberately placed most of their surgical abortion centers within a two-mile walking radius of Black and Latino neighborhoods. (According to Census tract data, 24 of Planned Parenthood’s 25 surgical centers 10,000 square feet or larger are located in communities of color.) Women entering those centers are not given the freedom to choose. The options of adoption or parenting are rarely if ever discussed. What is discussed, and even pushed, is the right to terminate the child.
Despite assuring Americans that they are providers of “healthcare,” Planned Parenthood is little more than a purveyor of abortion — with which they especially target minority communities. In fact, nearly 55 percent of abortions performed in America are on Black and Latino women. In 1962, when Alan Guttmacher took over the leadership of the organization (he was vice president of the American Eugenics Society at the time), Planned Parenthood began moving the needle toward abortion on demand — a development achieved in 1973 which has been called the greatest advance for eugenics.
Planned Parenthood must be stopped. This evil must end. And Americans must reject the Democratic Party’s efforts to cement abortion into its culture and demand lawmakers once again protect and promote life for all, including the unborn.
Photo credit: American Life League via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0
