10 Reasons to Defund Planned Parenthood (2/2)
Senate Republicans are expected to vote on a bill this week to defund Planned Parenthood, after four sting videos showed executives seemingly trafficking baby body parts. The fourth video, released Thursday, is perhaps the most disturbing. In it, a Planned Parenthood vice president reveals that some babies are born before their abortions (alive?), so they make prime "intact" specimens to sell to medical labs. And, she discusses how a Planned Parenthood lawyer obscures the sale of body parts to make it look like "research," not business.
As I explained in part one of "10 Reasons to Defund Planned Parenthood," Planned Parenthood's claim that it merely donates body parts doesn't match the evidence presented in the videos. Yet, profiting from selling the parts of aborted babies, which is illegal, represents only the tip of the iceberg of Planned Parenthood's offenses. The group also aids and abets sex traffickers; covers up sexual abuse of minors; supports sex-selective abortions; and functions as an arm of the Democratic Party. But, that's not all.
Here are five more reasons why every American should support eliminating the nearly $540 million dollars in tax-payer funds that the nation's leading abortion provider receives every year.
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6. Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist who wanted to improve the human race through selective breeding.
Planned Parenthood reveres its founder Margaret Sanger. In fact, every year since 1966, Planned Parenthood has given its highest honor, the Margaret Sanger Award, to someone it deems a leader in the reproductive rights movement. But, just who was Margaret Sanger — the mother of our nation's top abortion provider? Not surprising, given her legacy, she is someone who once said, "The most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it." Sanger also said, "(We should) apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring."
You see, Sanger was an outspoken eugenicist — someone who believed the way to improve the human race was through sterilizing those with undesirable traits. And to Sanger, no one was less desirable than a black person. So, she specifically targeted African-Americans for birth control and sterilization, and even deceived black pastors into helping with her plan.
"We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," Sanger once wrote," and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."
It's absolutely unconscionable that an organization receiving federal funds would honor a racist and eugenicist like Margaret Sanger. Perhaps next year, Planned Parenthood should also offer the Adolf Hitler Award?
7. Planned Parenthood targets black women for abortion.
Today, a black woman in the United States is five times more likely than a white woman to get an abortion. In fact, an estimated 1,876 black babies are aborted every day in the United States — a total of 16 million since 1973! This is a tragedy of epic proportions, but it is no accident. As previously mentioned, Margaret Sanger targeted African-Americans for her evil, eugenics plan and this racial profiling continues today.
Research by Protecting Black Life found that Planned Parenthood puts 79 percent of its 165 surgical abortion clinics within walking distance of African-American or Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods. (Hispanic women are twice as likely as white women to get abortions.) "Minority communities are the #1 targets of Planned Parenthood," Rev. Arnold Culbreath, Director of Protecting Black Life, told LifeNews.com. "It's no wonder abortion remains the leading cause of death among African Americans, higher than all other causes combined." This loss of life must be stopped.
8. Planned Parenthood is America's largest abortion provider and it wants to keep that title.
Studies show that most Americans want abortion to be rare, but Planned Parenthood definitely does not share that sentiment. Planned Parenthood performs one of every three abortions in the U.S. — or more than 327,000 in 2014 alone. However, according to former Planned Parenthood clinic director, Abby Johnson, Planned Parenthood would like to increase that number. Johnson said Planned Parenthood regularly gave her "abortion quotas." She also has posted pictures of awards given to affiliates for "exceeding abortion visits." A Planned Parenthood affiliate confirmed the award at its website saying, "We aim to expand access to all of our services, and we commend our dedicated, passionate staff when they succeed in reaching more people who need care. And, yes, we absolutely do celebrate our progress in ensuring that more people have access to the full range of reproductive health care, including abortion. And we always will."
9. Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms and provides primary care for only a very small percentage of its clientele.
In the wake of the controversy over the Planned Parenthood videos, Hillary Clinton claimed, "(F)or more than a century Planned Parenthood has provided essential services for women, not just reproductive health services, including access to affordable family planning, but cancer screenings, for example, and other health checkup."
This is a common refrain echoed by Planned Parenthood and its supporters. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards has even claimed that the organization performs mammograms. It doesn't. In fact, a Live Action investigation of 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 states revealed that none provided mammograms. They simply refer women to providers that do.
"We actually don't have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics," a staff member at Planned Parenthood's Comprehensive Health Center Clinic in Overland Park, KS, told Live Action.
The truth is Planned Parenthood is not a significant primary care provider at all. According to a report from the Chiaroscuro Foundation, Planned Parenthood provided primary care to only about 19,700 of its three million unduplicated clients. And, these services have been declining in recent years — from 21,247 in 2007 to 20,235 in 2008 to 19,796 in 2011.
10. Planned Parenthood deceives women into thinking an unborn baby is just a "fetus" or a "blob of tissue."
I have talked to numerous women who have had abortions and deeply regret them. To a person, they say they bought the lie that the baby inside their womb was just a "fetus" or a "blob of tissue." Kathy Rutledge, who had a late second-trimester abortion when she was just 18, recalled the horror when she saw her dead baby's grimacing face as a medical assistant carried it out of the room.
"It's not supposed to be a baby yet!" she cried. "They said it wasn't a baby yet!"
Rutledge, like so many of the post-abortive women I've interviewed, struggled for years with depression and even suicidal thoughts after her abortion. Another friend of mine told me about her abortion, which took place in her first trimester. Though her baby was not nearly as developed as Rutledge's, she recounted that she sobbed in the post-op room, as did the seven other women who had just had their abortions. Would women really sob over someone simply excising a blob of tissue? No, women sob because deep-down, they know another, less convenient reality: that blob is a human life.
Because of the previous nine reasons, I appeal to every American, even those who identify as pro-choice, to support defunding Planned Parenthood. This is not a legitimate, above-board organization, and it doesn't deserve federal subsidies. However, now I am also appealing to those of you who are pro-choice and I'm urging you to reconsider supporting abortion at all. Please watch the videos. See the tiny fingers of a mutilated 11-week baby in the Planned Parenthood pathology lab. Look at its kidneys, eyeballs and severed legs. Then tell me if that dismembered baby was not a human being who deserved a shot at life. I think that baby did. And, I'm tired of my money going to an organization that thinks it didn't.
