When last we discussed Dr. Leana Wen, the unceremoniously ousted President of Planned Parenthood had just sent what a New York Times reporter described as “a barbed 1,400-word letter to Planned Parenthood’s board of directors” which included this doozy of a statement: “No amount of money can ever buy my integrity and my commitment to the patients I serve.” Reporter Shane Goldmacher had obtained a copy which (in his words) “left open the possibility of legal action.”
Things have quieted down a lot since the September 14 story. For example, a few days later, the Baltimore Sun reported that “Dr. Leana Wen, Baltimore’s former health commissioner, has resolved a dispute with Planned Parenthood over her severance and benefits, which she said the organization was withholding to get her to sign a burdensome confidentiality contract after she was fired less than a year into her tenure as president and CEO.”
Both Wen and Planned Parenthood issued nicey-nicey statements. However, a day or two later, according to the Sun’s Colin Campbell, Wen issued a follow-up statement in which she
said she signed a confidentiality agreement when she was hired by Planned Parenthood, but refused to sign the additional one the organization wanted from her as a condition of her departure.
“As I’ve maintained throughout the negotiations, I would not and have not signed a confidentiality clause that prohibits me from speaking about my experiences and reflections of my service to Planned Parenthood,” she said. “I will never compromise my integrity and be prevented from speaking freely as a physician and public health expert.”
So when a friend forwarded me an interview Wen gave to the Baltimore Sun’s Meredith Cohn, I was all ears. And Wen’s comments were exceptionally revealing, not for a fuselage aimed at PPFA (she was exceptionally complimentary) but for what her experience as a working mom said about her and being in the employ of the largest abortion provider in the United States.
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For example, Cohn asked, “How does being a new(ish) mom shape how you feel about work/life balance?”
My son, Eli, is now 2 years old. It’s not an exaggeration to say that my entire perspective on work and life — not just work/life balance — has changed since Eli was born. Actually, this was one of the hardest parts about my job at Planned Parenthood: I was often traveling from Sunday afternoon to Friday evening. I missed my husband, Sebastian, and Eli very much. It broke my heart when, a few months into the job, Eli began crying when I came home because he saw me as a stranger.
Two quick thoughts. First, Wen and her husband “are looking forward to bringing baby No. 2 into the world, to Baltimore! Eli’s brother or sister is due at the end of March.”
“Baby”? To Planned Parenthood, “it” is a “baby” when “it” is ex utero breathing on “its” own, and not before.
Again, I’m not a PPFA insider, but you know the abortion militants who make up the upper echelons were not happy when, without telling anyone, she wrote a very moving piece for the Washington Post about the miscarriage she’d experienced earlier this year.
She wrote how “We got more and more excited as we planned for Baby No. 2,” an wholly unacceptable humanizing of the “it” who was still located within her body.
Second, some people have suggested to me that at some point Dr. Wen will inevitably be one of those women who come out of the Abortion Industry, wiser for the time spent on the dark side. Were it only so.
It’s hard to believe, however. She recycles chapter and verse the talking points from Planned Parenthood’s script. And Wen probably, at some level, believes that aborting 300,000+babies a year is a kind of sideline which at some point in time Planned Parenthood will quit to do real women’s health.
In the meanwhile, she has evidently made her piece with Planned Parenthood.
Tragically, PPFA’s war on unborn babies shows no signs of slowing down.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
