Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Glamour Magazine Does Its Best to Glamorize Planned Parenthood

Yesterday, the self-described “Fashion Trends, Beauty, and Entertainment” magazine Glamour published an article glamorizing the jobs of Planned Parenthood employees by attempting to show how ordinary, yet extraordinary, their jobs are. Appealing to readers’ emotions, this wordy article is filled with anecdotal stories, details about what the clinic workers eat for lunch and what pranks they play on April Fool’s Day, and not-so-subtle political messages.

The Glamour article, which is titled “The Quiet, Revolutionary Act of Working at Planned Parenthood,” begins by describing the daily routine of Julia Schenck, an employee at a New York Planned Parenthood who likes to start her day off with coffee at Burger King. The author then goes on to describe many of the clinic’s other employees and tries to assure the reader that their jobs are no different than anyone else’s:

However it looks from the outside, Julia’s workplace is both extraordinary and ordinary, full of a diverse team of women (and a few men) who try to squeeze in time to care for one another, in between caring for the people they are there to serve. They hustle to get through the day, they complain about who left food rotting in the fridge, and they surprise each other with garlic knots from a nearby restaurant. It is the accumulation of these mundane moments—the heroic finding of a long-lost stapler, the jokes exchanged in the hall—that makes up a life at work, anyone’s life at work. This is no different at Planned Parenthood, even if the everyday-ness defies the perceptions of a national network, with celebrity-studded fund-raisers or health centers trying to survive political maneuverings.

Sprinkled throughout the narrative are pictures of the Planned Parenthood workers whose stories are highlighted in the article. There are a few other pictures, as well, including one showing two bulletin boards with photos of babies pinned to them. The picture’s caption reads, “In the hallway, the health center proudly displays pictures of babies born to mothers who received care there.”

There is no mention, of course, of how many more babies would be pictured on the wall had their lives not been ended by the clinic’s abortionists. The article makes sure to note, however, that this particular clinic schedules all of their abortions on just two mornings a week, as if that somehow makes them more humane.

Omitting any descriptions of the horror women undergo at the hands of Planned Parenthood’s abortionists, the article leaves the reader with the impression that the most uncomfortable thing women experience at Planned Parenthood are pap smears. But even then, the author assures readers, an ob-gyn named Lea puts her patients at ease.

In an effort to cast a positive light on the clinic workers, the author made sure to mention that these women who work at this Planned Parenthood location are educated and religious. One of them was the “recipient of a prestigious fellowship” who studied — wait for it — women’s studies. Another, Fabia, is according to the author a “devout” Catholic who hangs a rosary in her car and feels that “God has me here for a purpose.”

The article also contains numerous political messages scattered throughout, such as one criticizing efforts to defund Planned Parenthood. It notes that the busy pace of the clinic workers’ jobs keep them from worrying about efforts by lawmakers to defund their place of employment.

Contrary to what this author would have her readers believe, working for an organization which kills unborn children is neither ordinary nor extraordinary. There is absolutely nothing glamorous about Planned Parenthood.

Photo credit: American Life League via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

More From The Pulse