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News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
News and commentary from the Pro-Life Action League
In the latest online edition of the Journal of Medical Ethics, two ethicists working in Australian universities make the argument that if abortion is legal in the first, second, or third trimester, why not in the fourth trimester as well?
Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva make the case that in “circumstances occur[ing] after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.”
Giubilini and Minerva would be uncomfortable with saying they’re advocating “infanticide”; instead, they prefer the term “after-birth abortion.”
While freely acknowledging “the oxymoron in the expression,” they believe the latter “[emphasizes] that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus (on which ‘abortions’ in the traditional sense are performed) rather than to that of a child.” [Continue reading ...]
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards had a laugher of a letter to the editor in the New York Times this week in which she wrote:
In “He’s a Quarterback, He’s a Winner, He’s a TV Draw, He’s a Verb” (This Land column, front page, Jan. 14), Dan Barry writes about a 2010 Super Bowl commercial telling how Tim Tebow’s mother decided not to end a life-threatening pregnancy and he adds, “There was no tebowing that week in the halls of Planned Parenthood.”
That suggests that Planned Parenthood does not celebrate birth or a remarkable story like Mr. Tebow’s. In fact, the Tebow story exemplifies the health care environment that Planned Parenthood promotes — a world in which women and families are supported in the medical decisions they make for themselves and their families without government interference. [emphasis added]
Seriously? Cecile Richards actually wants you to believe that Planned Parenthood celebrates “a remarkable story like Mr. Tebow’s”? And that “the Tebow story exemplifies the health care environment that Planned Parenthood promotes”?
Maybe in Bizarro World that’s true, but not in the real world. [Continue reading ...]
I wouldn’t exactly call it the highlight of Advent, but today marked the return of an annual experience for me since I signed up for Planned Parenthood’s e-mails a few years back: receiving an e-mail from Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards wishing me a Merry Christmas “healthy and safe holiday season.” (See the message in its entirety here.)
Of course, the message was really just a fundraising appeal. It contained three links to their donations page within the message itself, not to mention the big pink “GIVE NOW” button that was impossible to miss. Only one sentence of the e-mail was written in boldface — because, of course, this was the one thing they wanted to focus their members’ attention on, so as to gin up donations:
Opponents of women’s health haven’t given up—day in and day out, they’re attacking Planned Parenthood and every woman’s right to make her own medical decisions.
“Opposing women’s health,” “attacking women’s rights” — same old, same old. We’ve heard it all a thousand times before.
Note also that Richards trotted out the tired old “Choice on Earth” slogan for this year’s Christmas holiday message.
What this tells us is that Planned Parenthood has nothing new to offer.
I have to agree with Richards on at least one point, though. Her opening paragraph reads: [Continue reading ...]
“Planned Parenthood is the most cost-effective provider of family planning services in this country.”
Cecile Richards may rue the day she said these words in an interview last month with an Oregon newspaper.
Jill Stanek is reporting that a former employee of Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast has filed a whistleblower’s complaint [PDF] with the Attorney General of Texas and the U.S. Department of Justice alleging that PPGC’s management engaged in an elaborate Medicaid fraud scheme:
Karen Reynolds, who worked as a “health care assistant” from 1999 to 2009 at the Lufkin, Texas, branch of the affiliate formerly known as Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas, has submitted company memos and emails to support her charge that PPGC has engaged in a systemwide scheme to bilk Medicaid, Title XX, and the Women’s Health Program of tens of millions of dollars over the course of at least a decade.
The complaint alleges that PPGC’s policy of which medical services to provide and charge for depended largely on who was paying. If the patient was self-paying, then only “services based on medical necessity” were provided. But if the government was footing the bill through a program like Medicaid, then Planned Parenthood would run up quite a tab, “often provid[ing] services on an ‘across the board’ basis even when such services were not medically necessary.” [Continue reading ...]
In an interview published yesterday in the Oregon paper Williamette Week, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards was asked about her annual salary — nearly $400,000 — and why Planned Parenthood has shied away from publicly commenting on the widespread belief that such an amount is a bit extravagant for the head of a non-profit organization that receives over $360 million of your tax dollars annually.
Richards’ answer: “I work hard for my salary.”
She continued her dismissive response by proclaiming, “Planned Parenthood is the most cost-effective provider of family planning services in this country.”
The interviewer apparently didn’t ask any follow-up questions. That’s a pity, because it would have been interesting to see how Richards would have responded if she’d been asked how she squares her belief about PP’s unparalleled cost-effectiveness with the recent finding that increasing government funding of Planned Parenthood has had zero effect on the rate of unintended pregnancy nationwide. [Continue reading ...]
As part of my work fighting Planned Parenthood, I regularly monitor the abortion giant’s e-mail messages to supporters. I’m rarely surprised by the heated rhetoric and propaganda I see in these e-mails, but last Friday’s message from Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards betrayed such contempt for the truth that even I was struck by it.
The message begins fairly typically, with an outlandish declaration:
Dear ________,
I’m appalled by what is happening in my home state. Governor Rick Perry and the Texas legislature have launched a relentless assault on Planned Parenthood and women’s health that is a true threat to women in Texas and beyond.
Note that Richards decries this “assault on Planned Parenthood and women’s health” as if the two are one and the same—and as if anyone would really be opposed to “women’s health,” least of all the 21 women members of the Texas legislature who voted in favor of the measure, well outnumbering the 15 women who voted against it.
Of course, by “women’s health” we know what Planned Parenthood really means: abortion. That’s the kind of rhetoric we’re used to. But Richards’ next paragraph rises to a crescendo of dishonesty:
This week, Gov. Perry and anti-women’s health legislators in Texas passed a bill that would force women seeking abortion care to view a sonogram. It would also require doctors to read an anti-choice script written by the anti-choice legislature . . .
The bill—HB 15—was actually passed way back in May, not last week, but that error seems almost quaint in comparison to the shocking mendacity of the way Richards characterizes the legislation. [Continue reading ...]
Last week, the Guttmacher Institute announced the publication of an analysis of the rate of unintended pregnancy in the United States from 2001 to 2006. The report unwittingly makes the case for defunding Planned Parenthood.
Guttmacher reports that overall “the unintended pregnancy rate has remained essentially flat” during that period but that it “has increased dramatically among poor women.” Their conclusion [PDF]: “The United States did not make progress toward its goal of reducing unintended pregnancy between 2001 and 2006.”
The Institute was founded as a division of Planned Parenthood in 1968, and later named in honor of former Planned Parenthood director Alan Guttmacher when it became independent in 1977. However—as the two groups’ response to the new report shows—Guttmacher and Planned Parenthood continue to work hand-in-glove.
“The Guttmacher Institute’s new analysis of unintended pregnancy should serve as a national wake-up call,” declared Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards—and for once I agree with her. But we’re completely at odds as to what the wake-up call is trying to tell us. [Continue reading ...]
Yesterday the parody news website The Onion posted an article titled, “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex.”
In the satirical piece, the “Abortionplex” is said to allow Planned Parenthood to “terminate unborn lives with an efficiency never before thought possible”:
During a press conference, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards told reporters that the new state-of-the-art fetus-killing facility located in the nation’s heartland offers quick, easy, in-and-out abortions to all women, and represents a bold reinvention of the group’s long-standing mission and values.
“Although we’ve traditionally dedicated 97 percent of our resources to other important services such as contraception distribution, cancer screening, and STD testing, this new complex allows us to devote our full attention to what has always been our true passion: abortion,” said Richards, standing under a banner emblazoned with Planned Parenthood’s new slogan, “No Life Is Sacred.” “And since Congress voted to retain our federal funding, it’s going to be that much easier for us to maximize the number of tiny, beating hearts we stop every day.”
On March 30, an investigation by Live Action revealed that contrary to claims made by Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards, the nation’s largest abortion chain does not, in fact, perform mammograms.
And yet, several weeks later, Susan G. Komen for the Cure — the King Kong of breast cancer awareness organizations — is still referring mammogram-seeking women to PP.
After Live Action’s investigation was released, pro-lifers began contacting Komen to ask them why they’re continuing to give money to the nation’s largest abortion chain. In response, Komen issued this statement [PDF] on its website, which begins thusly: [Continue reading ...]
While reading Jill Stanek’s piece on the lowly turnout for the pro-abortion “lobbying day” in Washington D.C., I noticed in one of the photos none other than Steve Trombley, former CEO of Planned Parenthood of Illinois.
As you may recall, Trombley was moved last year to Planned Parenthood’s affiliate in Northern New England, based in abortion-friendly Vermont, where he could do less harm to their “brand” (as national CEO Cecile Richards puts it).
Trombley presided over the failed deception scheme whereby Planned Parenthood opened their first mega-abortuary in Aurora, Illinois, under the name of a front company.
Planned Parenthood’s public-image woes, which have ramped up considerably in the past six months, could be said to have begun right there in Aurora. [Continue reading ...]
