Outrage. Hurt. Betrayal. American women are questioning government’s considerations of cutting Planned Parenthood’s funding, wondering if their leaders have their best interests at heart. They are accusing women’s rights of being belittled by this action. Many consider the proposal to sever government funds to Planned Parenthood as a personal attack against women and minorities who rely on Planned Parenthood’s health care and support.
But among cries of indignation, no one seems to be concerned about Congress’ motives. Few, if any, seem to be taking a second look at the organization itself and its practices.
Planned Parenthood serves reproductive health support and services for communities around the world. Women who need birth control or other expensive drug prescriptions that can be costly and difficult to obtain at a hospital or pharmacy view Planned Parenthood as a beacon of protection for health and their right to choose.
But Planned Parenthood is still a business organization and despite its non-profit status, it must still protect its bottom line.
Planned Parenthood has a history of covering up human rights abuses to push its largest service — abortions.
Abortions make up 37 percent of Planned Parenthood’s revenue. Former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson said she was given an “abortion quota” to meet. With this type of mindset, women become numbers rather than real people who need help or even clients who deserve respect.
Live Action, a youth-led activist movement spearheaded by recent UCLA graduate Lila Rose, began a nationwide campaign to expose Planned Parenthood’s facade. In a series of under-cover videos, Live Action activists caught Planned Parenthood employees breaking state and federal laws.v
Footage taken and published on YouTube showed a Live Action member entering a Planned Parenthood pretending to be an impregnated 14-year-old girl with a 31-year-old boyfriend. Law requires Planned Parenthood employees to report this as statutory rape and, in many states including California, to alert the parents. But in order to sell the abortion Planned Parenthood employees told the 14-year old to fake her age, to omit the age of her boyfriend and to refrain from saying anything that would incriminate Planned Parenthood.
The film highlights real-life situations of girls who are swept into a system that views them as numbers. Many of these girls are victims of abuse and incest. Planned Parenthood has the opportunity to help them. But they do not. They fix their “problem” – the pregnancy – and send them on their way.
In the Midwest, Live Action called a number of Planned Parenthood clinics, pretending to be prospective financial benefactors. Live Action activists asked that the money they donated be designated for the abortion of black babies, explaining that they thought African-Americans were over-running the community and needed to be thinned out. Planned Parenthood readily agreed to take the money under those conditions.
In its most recent film, Live Action hired actors who went to clinics along the East Coast, specifically targeting areas around New Jersey. The young actors went incognito as pimps looking for cheap ways to take care of their prostitutes. Shockingly, as the consultations unfold, it becomes apparent that the pimps are illegally trafficking girls as young as 14 in the sex trade.
Planned Parenthood staffers did nothing to alert authorities. Planned Parenthood did nothing to stop the despicable enslavement of young women. Planned Parenthood helped the “pimps” and accepted their money.
For an organization that claims to champion the rights of women, it seems to be very willing to desert girls who desperately need their help. Its outright acceptance of racially-charged monies is a slap in the face to the African-American communities it allegedly supports.
Investigations are producing evidence of these atrocities on a national scale. The organization as a whole is having devastating effects on those it claims to help because it is infested with a mindset that life is not as important as money.
States all around the nation have begun investigations into Planned Parenthood clinics and still Planned Parenthood continues to break laws and fights to keep laws that would require them to report suspected sexual abuse of minors from passing state legislatures. It has also opposed efforts to pass health and safety regulations for abortion clinics.
Planned Parenthood is not looking to protect women. It does not deserve the $650 million taxpayer dollars it receives each year.
Because of the illegal activities Planned Parenthood has engaged in, the government is looking to withdraw its financial support of the organization.
There are 1,048 government health centers nationwide that provide STD testing and contraception. Planned Parenthood is not the only institution that offers these benefits. But if it was, these conveniences do not compensate for the desecration of human rights, not to mention the violations of civil law.
Such unwillingness to acknowledge Planned Parenthood’s actions or even to investigate them suggest that the people of this country have become so selfish that they are willing to overlook the needs of girls who are the victims of statutory rape and abuse in exchange for their own personal wants. America has become a nation that embraces ends as a justification for means.
Americans should not be condoning Planned Parenthood’s actions, nor should they be overlooking the atrocities for the sake of convenience. Congress is making the right decision to consider slitting the money vein that runs between this organization and the American people.
Outrage, hurt and betrayal are the appropriate emotions to be feeling about this issue. But they should not be directed at our government. They should be driven toward the organization that claimed to help women and minorities and to defend human rights — and then stabbed each one in the back.
