Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, launched a new campaign Thursday ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The “Unstoppable” campaign highlights eight leftist tenets that the abortion organization lays out in a manifesto.
The manifesto’s central tenets are that “our bodies are our own” and “no equality is possible without this”, birth control is “basic health care”, health care is a “human right”, and abortions should be without restriction. It also calls for freedom from sexual violence, equal pay, paid family leave, and a rejection of racism, homophobia, and transphobia.
“Access to comprehensive reproductive health care, which includes access to safe, legal, abortion, is vital for women to live full, healthy lives and plan their futures,” the website argues.
“The Trump-Pence administration has worked to restrict access to abortion, undermined birth control access by allowing virtually any employer to refuse to provide coverage for birth control based on a religious or moral objection, and tried to block people from getting care at Planned Parenthood health centers,” according to the website. “We should be working towards a world where our bodies are our own, and women are able to access full reproductive care.”
The campaign released a star-studded video featuring music from Sia and an appearance by “Big Bang Theory” star Mayim Bialik. Planned Parenthood has long touted support from celebrities to help promote their abortion agenda.
“The UNSTOPPABLE Manifesto video is a rallying call for people to join the movement and build the world we want to see — where everyone has the freedom and opportunity to control their own bodies and their own futures — regardless of race, gender, income, zip code, or immigration status,” Dawn Laguens, executive vice president for Planned Parenthood commented. “There is unprecedented energy and momentum to unite around full equality for all — and women are leading the way.”
However, a closer look at some of the sources for Planned Parenthood’s arguments about women’s equality raises some questions.
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The equal pay section of Planned Parenthood’s website claims that “the reality is discrimination in pay often sits at the nexus of sexism and racism — as well as homophobia and transphobia.”
They go on to cite the wage gap statistic that women are paid about 80 cents for every dollar men make, a figure that has been attributed by some to intentional job choices by women. Critics point out that that figure doesn’t measure men and women “working the same amount of time, the same hours during the day, or the same days of the week.”
In the website’s section on sexual assault and harassment, it cites a 2011 CDC survey that has been scrutinized for its ambiguous questions. The study found that one in five U.S. women have been raped, however, as a Washington Post fact check found, one of the questions in the study asks about events that occurred when someone was “drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent,” (emphasis mine) which made the fact checker wonder if “given the wording, is it possible for a listener to misinterpret it as a question about whether they had sex while drunk or high?”
The Post noted that “almost 50 percent of the rapes reported by the survey depend on this drunk/high/lack of consent section. More than 9 percent of the women — which adds up to an estimated 11.2 million people — were classified as rape victims as a result of this question.”
Planned Parenthood performed 321,384 abortions over this past year, according to their latest annual report. As the Trump administration is poised to block Title X family planning funding to organizations that provide or refer for abortions, the abortion giant has a huge stake in electing Democrats who are friendly to their policy agenda.
