Planned Parenthood specializes in preventing maternity — not promoting it.
So it was more than a little surprising when the group’s president, Cecile Richards, weighed in on Donald Trump’s pro-family child care plan. In an ironic twist, the abortion mogul specifically attacked the GOP nominee’s push to give parents six weeks of paid maternity leave — an issue that most people never assumed was particularly partisan to begin with. Of course, for Planned Parenthood, an organization that objects to any government spending that doesn’t include abortion, the statements just go to show where the group’s real priorities lie.
Still, the optics were less than flattering for Richards, who fired off “that [Trump’s] half-baked proposal on maternity leave only applies to women who have given birth. This proposal,” she complains, “like his whole campaign, leaves out an entire swath of people in America who don’t fit his narrow version of what makes a family. It doesn’t respect the needs of fathers, or adoptive or fostering parents, and continues the myth of a 1950s world where women take care of children and men work.”
The comments aren’t just ridiculous because a supposedly pro-women’s group doesn’t support benefits for women — but because it’s obvious Richards never read the plan before blasting it.
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If she’d taken a few minutes to look at the proposal, she’d have seen that Trump’s ultimate goal is to offer relief for parents — moms and dads. What’s impressive (and frankly, long overdue) about Donald Trump’s plan is that it’s a major recognition of both parents as contributors to society. The GOP nominee goes to great lengths to make sure that women who work outside the home have the flexibility they need to do so.
Ivanka Trump, who’s helping to drive her dad’s plan, has been very open about the fact that this is a new era for child care. “At the heart of this policy is the belief that every parent should have the freedom to make the best decisions for his or her family,” she explained in a thoughtful op-ed for the Wall Street Journal. “My father is prepared to chart a new course that promotes strong families and celebrates their individual needs; one that honors, respects and empowers both working and stay-at-home mothers and caregivers.”
The problem for liberals (and Planned Parenthood in particular) is that they can’t see beyond their obsession with abortion. Instead, they see any healthy and positive investment in America’s families as competition for the culture of death. If anyone’s an enemy of motherhood, it’s Cecile Richards’s group, which believes that any money the government has should expand abortion — not families.
In Hillary Clinton, they have a dream candidate, who vows to ship even more taxpayers dollars to a group that is a literal dead end for our economy. Donald Trump’s proposal, on the other hand, understands what social science has been telling us for decades. The best thing we can do for growth is encourage stable, married, child-producing families. Where else do we get future workers, voters, and taxpayers?
As volumes of Dr. Pat Fagan’s data tell us: Marriage is the biggest producer of human capital in the world, and when the government encourages non-married and fewer child-centered families, it undermines the economy. “[M]arried families are the essential contributors to the wealth generation. Their income and savings immediately translate into revenue for government and capital for the economy…”
As FRC’s research bears out, the intact married family is the most powerful economic engine there is. But lately, there’s been an erosion of the openness to children — which is driven by at least two things: the radical sexual revolution we’re experiencing (courtesy of groups like Planned Parenthood) and government policies that deemphasize family and increase dependency. We can’t wait for the economy to get better to focus on the family, we need to focus on the family to get the economy healthy. Thank goodness at least one presidential candidate gets it.
LifeNews Note: Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council.
