I came across an interesting advertisement on page A13 of The Wall Street Journal Monday. At the top it states, “From the Desk of Richard M. Scaife – An Open Letter to Fellow Conservatives: Why Conservatives Should Oppose Efforts to Defund Planned Parenthood.” This ad was originally published as an op-ed in the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review, a paper owned by Mr. Scaife’s parent company.
First, Scaife uses ironically appropriate language stating Republicans and conservatives are “dead wrong” because they voted to defund Planned Parenthood. “The Republican led U.S. House of Representatives – urged on by conservatives who oppose abortion – has voted to defund Planned Parenthood. On this issue, Republicans and conservatives are dead wrong.”
He says this twice. I wonder if he carefully chose the word dead, or was it a fitting colloquialism? All that comes to mind are the dead babies, the millions killed over the years, the 332,278 dead in 2009 alone who suffered at the hands of Planned Parenthood.
Scaife goes on to tout the virtues of eugenicist Margaret Sanger “respect[ing] her dedication to making health-care and birth-control services available… especially to those with low incomes, no insurance and no other recourse to medical services.” Yes, Sanger desired to reduce the number of “unfit” in American society and what better way to do that than to make sure they were never born?
Scaife calls abortions a “minor aspect of Planned Parenthood’s mission” even though they recently announced that all affiliates should prepare to operate at least one abortion clinic over the course of the next two years. If abortions are so minor, why the plan for expansion?
“More than 90 percent of its work focuses on preventative care, including preventing unintended pregnancies that often lead to unwanted, neglected and abused children.” There is so much wrong with the sentence I am not sure where to begin. To call a child unwanted and to presume neglect and abuse never justifies murder, the ultimate abuse. Additionally, if preventative care is it’s primary focus, then Planned Parenthood gets an F. Non-marital births and sexually transmitted infections are on the rise and abortion rates are no longer in decline. So much for the 4 million contraceptive services they provided in 2008.
Maybe the 20 percent of teenagers Scaife is worried won’t be cared for without federal dollars being dumped into Planned Parenthood would be better off if self-respect was taught instead of sexual slavery, er, freedom. Shouldn’t the astounding statistic of one in four teenage girls having a sexually transmitted disease be less if they’re being counseled on how to “take care down there”. Planned Parenthood once again gets a failing grade.
As for “arrang[ing] adoptions”, if you can call a referral an arrangement, then yes, they do that for once every 340 abortions they perform. Ninety eight percent of Planned Parenthood’s services to pregnant women (abortion, adoption and prenatal care) are abortion.
And he wants the government to keep giving them more money. Planned Parenthood has nearly one billion dollars in net assets and launched a multi-million dollar ad campaign after recently dealing with a public relations nightmare brought on by Live Action (about which I recently wrote – Live Action has since continued to expose lies). If Planned Parenthood has millions of dollars to spend on PR, they can do without taxpayer dollars.
Finally, Scaife believes, “If not for Margaret Sanger’s vision and bravery, many poor Americans would have no place to turn for birth-control measures and counseling or for other health-care services.” This is simply untrue. Tens of thousands of doctors and hospitals provide primary care, contraception, sexually transmitted infection testing and cancer screening along with 1,050 community and federally qualified health centers.
Planned Parenthood is an abortion organization. They claim that federal money only pays for its non-abortion related services. But we all know money is fungible such that the more money Planned Parenthood receives from the government, the more its other sources of income are freed up for abortions. Abortion and birth control have been ruled as constitutionally protected services. Defunding Planned Parenthood cannot change this fact, or deprive Planned Parenthood of the ability to continue to provide these services. If Scaife is so concerned about the loss of money, he should donate more than he likely already does instead of demanding Americans forcibly participate in the evil of abortion simply by paying their taxes.
