After Komen, the Next Big Planned Parenthood Fight
Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Cecile Richards called 2011 "the most difficult year in our history." With yesterday's announcement that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation is ending its grants to the organization, 2012 isn't looking too good for the organization, either.
Komen had provided more than $600,000 to Planned Parenthood last year for breast exams and breast-cancer education. And while pro-life groups are cheering the move, they have their sights set on a much bigger target: the hundreds of millions of dollars Planned Parenthood receives in government funding. Building on successful defunding efforts in 2011, pro-life groups aim to keep more taxpayer dollars out of the hands of the nation's largest abortion provider.
The $1 billion-a-year organization said in its most recent annual report that it performed 329,445 abortions in 2010. $487 million, 46 percent of its revenue, came from government health service grants and reimbursements. The organization cannot legally use taxpayer dollars for an abortion. But, pro-life activists allege, the agency does not segregate funds as it should, effectively resulting in taxpayer support for abortion.
Employee scandals, government deficits, and budget-cutting lawmakers have provided a rare opportunity for pro-life groups to advocate for defunding Planned Parenthood. This year, pro-life leaders believe the House of Representatives will vote as it did last year to remove federal funding. (The measure failed in the Senate in 2011.) At the state level, Planned Parenthood has lost about $80 million in government funds in the past year, triggering budget cuts and clinic closures.
"The unprecedented attack on women's health care access," Wisconsin affiliate president Teri Huyck wrote in an opinion piece, "has been unlike anything I have ever seen in my lifetime."
Even Planned Parenthood insiders are joining the critics. Seven former Planned Parenthood employees have volunteered to testify against the organization at any congressional hearings that may occur. Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director who now works as a policy analyst for Americans United for Life (AUL), is likely to give testimony. "No one understands better than Abby how intertwined abortion policy and government funding have become," said AUL president Charmaine Yoest.
Francis Beckwith, author of Defending Life: A Moral and Legal Case against Abortion Choice, told Christianity Today, "The pro-life movement has a strange new respect. Pro-lifers have become more sophisticated, having better arguments."
Road to Investigation
A series of events caused abortion and abortion policy to stay in the public eye almost continuously for more than a year. Beckwith, a philosopher at Baylor University, said these events in part have exposed "the dark underbelly of Planned Parenthood."
Last February, members of the pro-life group Live Action posed as a pimp and prostitute in hidden-camera exposés. They asked for and received help from Planned Parenthood employees in four states to obtain abortions for the underage girls they supposedly "managed."
The exposé came after years of research convinced Live Action president Lila Rose that Planned Parenthood covers up the sexual abuse of its patients. Rose said of the videos, "I've never been in a Planned Parenthood clinic where they've done the right thing. They're always willing to work with [the abuser] or get a secret abortion for underage girls."
However, Planned Parenthood did alert the FBI to a potential sex trafficking ring, according to a press release. The organization decried the videos as doctored but mandated that staff be retrained in how to handle situations where a girl may be the victim of abuse. The clinic manager in the New Jersey office was fired as a result of the videos. Planned Parenthood's national office did not return several phone calls seeking comment for this story.
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Darrell J. Davis
As for you people defending PP, look up its history. the organization was founded to eliminate poor black babies and the mentally infirm. It was started to help create a "master race" and served as one of the inspirations to Hitler and his "final solution". Don't take my word for it, Google "quotes by Margaret Sanger" and "Eugenics" and see what you come up with. Wake up people! Satan is hard at work within the halls of Planned Parenthood and disguising it as "healthcare".
Original Anna
Gee, millions of women have depended on PP for "health care" for many years, was that while killing their unborn babies, some 50 million deaths by torture, which I think is murder without a trial by a jury of your peers, not health care. And women actually go for this murder instead of adoption. Something is wrong with the women in this country. When did women become the killers of their children and call it "health care" instead of "taking care of them". Your guilt and denial of what you have done won't make you guiltless, maybe acceptance of your "abortion" and forgiveness from Jesus will help you but you need to ask Jesus' help and stop defending what you and millions of women have done by denying it. And stop listening to men saying "It's your body, do what feels good to you with it." The men end up feeling good and you end up a murderer unless you go the adoption route. There are millions of other women waiting for your baby, proof of this is the number of foreign adoptions.
Godslion Godslion Godslionj
By the way, the text at Exodus 21 that some try to use to justify baby murder in the womb is speaking about a premature birth not a miscarriage. Noted Hebrew scholar Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. has observed that it is a “gross error,” either by translation or by means of commentary, to argue that a miscarriage is suggested in this passage (Toward Old Testament Ethics, Zondervan, 1983, p. 170). In an excellent article which discusses this passage at length, Jack W. Cottrell, a professor of theology at the Cincinnati Bible Seminary, declared: “There is absolutely no linguistic justification for translating verse 22 to refer to a miscarriage”,What, then, is the passage teaching? Simply this. If two fighting men injure a pregnant woman, causing her to give premature birth, yet no harm follows to either mother or child – a fine will be levied as a penalty for such carelessness. However, if any harm followed, to mother or babe, justice was to be meted out commensurate with degree of damage.
Godslion Godslion Godslion
The murder of babies in the womb - falsely called abortion- is NOT health care, its death care! How can anyone who claims to be a Christian not be conflicted that 55 million babies have been murdered in the womb in this country since Roe vs. Wade legalized this monstrous act? Again God says he " hates the shedding of innocent blood!" What blood is more innocent than that of a baby growing in its mothers womb? Moreover the church has ALWAYS been involved in and AGAINST this practice for 2000 years! Moreover the penalty in the Old Testament for killing a baby in the womb was a life for a life! The solution to the baby murder problem is for women to stop playing the whore by having sex outside of marriage and for men to stop playing the whoremonger by having sex outside of marriage, and instead to live by Gods righteous standard and only have sex within the bounds of marriage as GOD COMMANDS! That would end 99% of baby murder in the womb! We need to listen to God!
Anonymous
Planned Parenthood saves the lives of women. Millions of women have depended on them for health care for many many years. 40 years ago they were my only source of health care. I, along with most other women will always support the work of Planned Parenthood. I am not conflicted in the least. I understand Christianity to support the lives of individuals. I believe satan is using the issue of abortion to divide the church. It is not an essential doctrine...if it were there would be more written about it in the Bible. It is not clear and we should not be. In the OT Law a woman's life was valued higher than that of her unborn. The punishment was significantly less if a crime resulted in the death of the unborn. That's about the only scripture we have to go on. Planned Parenthood takes care of women's health. It is not an issue the church should be involved in. Period.