A Response to 'Pro-Life Groups Don't Really Protect the Unborn'
College junior and pro-abortion activist Elizabeth Jahr made an egregious allegation against the pro-life community last week in her opinion editorial submitted to The Christian Science Monitor. In her article, Pro-life Groups Don't Really Protect the Unborn, she charges pro-life groups with using a fight for life to veil a greedy power trip.
Unfortunately, Jahr's op-ed reads like a college student's term paper that argues the Odyssey is a roller coaster at a Disney theme park. It is missing pivotal facts about both the pro-life and pro-abortion movements. And I'm the pro-life kid in the class asking, "Where have you been all semester?"
The sad fact of the matter is that when young women like Jahr and I go to college, we are told to be open-minded. But as Jahr's commentary demonstrates, that merely consists of memorizing the bulleted talking points of the Leftists. You see, Jahr is only regurgitating the cliff notes she has been fed by the likes of Sandra Fluke and Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards when she wrote:
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Members of the pro-life movement spend countless dollars and hours on rallies and lobbying without providing adequate financial and emotional support for women to actually maintain pregnancies.
Three words Jahr should add to her vocabulary: Crisis. Pregnancy. Centers.
Because pro-life is pro-woman, there are an estimated 4,000 pro-life ministries committed to caring for women, their unborn babies, and their health. In the United States alone, there are over 2,500 Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs) offering free sonograms, pregnancy tests, parenting classes, STD testing, and after-abortion recovery counseling.
The pro-life group YoungLives has 200 community chapters worldwide. Run largely by volunteers, this pro-life group offers ongoing support, resources, and counseling to women in crisis pregnancies. These private programs - meaning they receive zero federal dollars - supply everything from diapers to bottles for scared and/or disadvantaged pregnant teenagers and women who would otherwise view abortion as their only option.
Those of us in the pro-life movement wish the number of national CPCs and YoungLives were greater than 4,000, and we'd love to be able to channel more funds to start new chapters, but we're not Planned Parenthood, a multi-million dollar business which is partially funded through taxpayer dollars. Pro-life groups and their staff are not in the money-making business. If we were, I wouldn't be eating Ramen noodles for lunch and living with three other girls just to make rent. The pro-life movement might not be glamorous, but for us, saving the lives of the unborn and their mothers is a bigger calling than money or political gain.
Beyond that, I'm simply stunned that Jahr would levy the "lack of compassion" charge at the pro-life movement. Pro-abortion titan Planned Parenthood is the one that's been consistently caught sans compassion, willing to overlook child abuse, child sex trafficking, and gender discrimination abortions just to keep a client, who can net them up to $950 per abortion.
Worst of all, Jahr's article also fails to mention that Planned Parenthood is currently under investigation by the Government Accountabilities Office (GAO) for financial waste, fraud, and abuse of the $542 million the abortion giant received in federal funds during 2011-2012. I guess that's one lesson pro-aborts forget to teach their new recruits.
According to an article by Brenda Zurita, Research Fellow for the pro-life Beverly LaHaye Institute, one Planned Parenthood affiliate in Texas has agreed to pay $4.3 million in recompenses to the U.S. government because it submitted fraudulent claims to Medicaid, Title XIX, Title XX, and the Texas Women's Health Program. Maybe Jahr filed that under "greed," instead of "lack of compassion."
Jahr goes on to completely disregard the leaps and bounds the pro-life community has made in health and safety regulations for women. Instead of acknowledging the fact that 80 percent of Americans want smarter regulations placed on abortions to ensure women's health and safety, Jahr decries states like Texas, which prevent abortion past five months of pregnancy. But what is disheartening - disturbing, really - is that instead of finding compassionate pro-abortion staff and sanitary surgical standards at Kermit Gosnell's abortion facility, state authorities discovered trophy jars of babies feet and the mangled, beheaded bodies of dead infants. Don't those babies deserve compassion, too?
Finally, here's a history lesson that Jahr probably hasn't received: Planned Parenthood's founding mission is to eliminate the poor and minorities, not serve them. In 1922, Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood because she was so disgusted with what she called, "benign imbeciles who encourage the defective and diseased elements of humanity in their reckless and irresponsible swarming and spawning."
For pro-life groups like Concerned Women for America, our agenda is not money, power, or discrimination. Our mission is honest and simple:
- Deny Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses taxpayer dollars.
- Focus Title X Funding to real women's health services like mammograms (which, despite Cecile Richards' best poker face, Planned Parenthood does not provide) and cervical screenings and strengthen health and safety clinic regulations.
- Protect unborn girls and minorities at high-risk of discriminatory abortions.
- Protect every unborn life.
So while it may seem chic for college girls like Jahr to root for the pro-abortion movement, it certainly isn't a fresh and modern trend to support fraud and crime. From one 20-something to another, it's time for out-of-touch abortion activists to catch up with the rest of the class. And that will be easy. Just follow Mother Teresa's advice: "Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway."
