EXPOSING PLANNED PARENTHOOD: Lila Rose on Glenn Beck.
OHATCHEE, Al., February 28, 2011 - Planned Parenthood, which currently receives more than $360 million from taxpayers each year, is targeted for defunding after an amendment introduced by Representative Mike Pence (R-IN) was passed in the House of Representatives.
The defunding attempt comes in the wake of more undercover reporting revelations from Live Action, a pro-life organization founded by Lila Rose when she was a student at UCLA. Over time, Planned Parenthood employees across the country have been caught covering up statutory rape and underage prostitution rings, giving out misleading medical and scientific information, and advising potential STD carriers to donate blood as a cheap way to get tested.
Furthermore, the intention of Pence et al is "to prohibit family planning grants from being awarded to any entity that performs abortions," as H.R. 217 reads. The outrage to this might be summed up in the rhetorical question, aren't abortions lawful?
There once was a lawful practice that some believed necessary to prevent their households from collapsing. It was a matter of money – a service the economy in some places had become dependent upon. It was a matter of privacy – a person was entitled to acquire it and not have their use of it infringed upon. It was a matter of culture – if you saw a problem with it, you didn’t have to buy into it, but to call it wrong exposed you to ridicule by advocates armed with popular science, the capacity to inflict financial woes and unemployment concerns, and fashion.
Eventually the lawful practice was made unlawful, and a Constitutional amendment was made to help ensure that those harmed by it would never be taken advantage of again.
If you haven’t guessed by now, the practice was race-based slavery in the United States of America.
Ironically, the Fourteenth Amendment, created to protect black citizens, has since been cited in making lawful yet another practice that is perceived to be necessary on grounds including economy, privacy and culture.
Like race-based slavery, abortion is based upon the premise that one interested party is dependent upon that service to live life to the fullest, and the other interested party is not fully human. Hauntingly, the issue of race reappears in the abortion debate: Nearly 60% of black babies in New York City were aborted in 2009.
Our contemporary human rights issue has another twist. Besides the question of the nature of human life (something that historically and scientifically should not be a question), the womb wars spawn from an endless Querelle des Femmes, the feud to define the nature of woman.
Planned Parenthood exists - and demands federal funding - ostensibly to help maintain women’s health. Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards even went so far as to take credit for providing mammograms (untrue). Unless “women’s health” refers to reconfiguring women’s reproductive systems so that they no longer reproduce, there is no reason to mince words about the mission of the nation’s largest abortion provider.
This brings to mind something sad and disturbing in the recent undercover footage of Planned Parenthood centers: The employees appeared to genuinely think that assisting young women in defiling themselves for a living is something good. They had convinced themselves that birth control was the safe and satisfactory answer to all women’s problems.
The third week of February was littered by the V-Day movement with promotions of a pudendal play initially scripted by Eve Ensler. V-Day aims to “[c]reate dialogue and shatter taboos around violence against women and girls”, particularly by theatrically showcasing the female reproductive anatomy along with obscenities and some man-defaming. How this is supposed to defend women is a mystery; does anyone associate men’s problems with a failure to have public dialogue about male genitalia?
Nevertheless, Planned Parenthood “is seen as a chief benefactor of V-Day”, as Gabriella Hoffman wrote in her article, "V-Day: Valentines and vulgarity".
V-Day’s website announces its intention to “create a world where women and girls are nurtured and protected.” Nurtured? Protected? To think that all this time I thought those were buzzwords from the Biblical conservative crowd that liberal feminists hate so much.
Abortion and hatred of fertility do not truly increase respect and protection for women. On the contrary, they aid and abet exploitation of women. Because responsibility for children can be avoided, criminal men can more freely take advantage of and violate women and girls (in other countries, the women's health fallacy has come full circle through gender-selective abortion targeting girl babies). Considering Planned Parenthood’s pecuniary interest in birth control, abortion and STDs, promiscuity is actually positive for the organization.
There is something wrong with a culture that treats pregnancy like a disease while risking damage to women’s health by artificially manipulating women’s bodies. We have a society that (partly due to Margaret Sanger's legacy) considers it acceptable to want the sex but not the babies - and for some to want the taxes but not the future taxpayers, for that matter.
Actress Natalie Portman can't even accept an Oscar as a pregnant woman and call motherhood "the most important role of my life" without receiving an odd backlash from a few child-shunning strongholds in society.
When Cecile Richards reached out to supporters of Planned Parenthood via YouTube, one of the highest rated comments said, "Too bad the virgin Mary didn't get an abortion. It would have saved the world a lot of trouble."
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen - the mindless quest to hijack the feminine nature for one's own ideological devices.
READ RAISED TO THE 9th POWER: Amanda Read with her eight siblings. Margaret Sanger once said that encouraging large families is a great evil. (Photo by Christine Read)
The issues attached to this debate are complex and not something to be naively shoved down people's throats. Did Margaret Sanger have reasonable concerns about families being unable to provide for children? When did apprehension about the responsibility for infants turn into a de facto doctrine against childbearing? How should women be protected in our society?
These are questions I hope to address in future articles, but thus far it seems clear that the plan to defund Planned Parenthood is not some cold-blooded plot to deprive women of health care. In light of the hefty fight Planned Parenthood is putting up, some are wondering why they need federal help in the first place.
Planned Parenthood is just another in a long list of programs and organizations that don't need or deserve government funding, and it happens to have a whole lot of baggage that isn't in the best interests of - believe it or not - an increasingly pro-life American citizenry.
Amanda Read is an unconventional scholar, a Southerner without an accent, a Christian who hasn’t been a churchgoer in 16 years and a college student who lives with eight younger siblings. A writer and artist, she blogs at www.amandaread.com and is the author of the historical drama screenplay The Crusading Chemist. Amanda is majoring in history and minoring in political science at Troy University.
Follow her on twitter at www.twitter.com/SincerelyAmanda and Facebook at www.facebook.com/AmandaChristineRead.
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