Planned Parenthood supporters continue to recycle the same misinformation

Planned Parenthood, which ends the lives of more than 320,000 preborn babies every year in abortions, continues to market the organization as a women’s health clinic.  Despite ongoing scandal and criminal investigation into America’s largest abortion chain, the business still has outspoken supporters.  There is abundant evidence readily available to the public detailing Planned Parenthood’s profitable commitment to abortion, no matter what.  Yet, deluded supporters continue to peddle the same lies in defense of one of America’s most prolific abortion mills.

An example of this uncritical support of Big Abortion appeared in The Courier of Montgomery County.  Letter writer David Hooper sprang to Planned Parenthood’s defense after being offended by a cartoon.  The cartoon in question featured a pregnant woman approaching Planned Parenthood with a view of the preborn child in her womb thinking “#MeToo.”  The hashtag is a reference the social media campaign in which countless women signed “Me too” to signify that they had been sexually harassed or assaulted.  The cartoon implies that the preborn baby, who can be violently killed at Planned Parenthood abortion mills across our country, is a victim of assault who, like so many victims of harassment and assault, has been ignored by those in power.

Mr. Hooper describes the image as “misleading” because “it attempted to portray Planned Parenthood as solely an abortion provider.”  Hooper goes on to recycle talking points from the Planned Parenthood media machine.

First, Hooper’s claim that “only 3 percent of our locations actually provide abortions” is demonstrably false.  Even the head honchos at Planned Parenthood don’t try to claim that 97 percent of their affiliates are abortion free, because that is so far off the mark.  Top executives at Planned Parenthood have frequently tried to claim that abortion is “only three percent of what we do.”  This assertion, made possible only through convoluted and downright dishonest math, is acknowledged as false by Pro-Life and anti-Life pundits alike.  Even the mainstream media, notoriously skewed toward anti-Life opinion, has rated the 3 percent myth as false.

Second, claiming that Planned Parenthood is a contraceptive provider whose benevolence ensures that “an estimated 579,000 unintended pregnancies are averted” is a tactic many other Planned Parenthood supporters have tried.  Although Planned Parenthood does provide some contraceptives, the data are not clear that these services prevent unintended pregnancies.  In fact, after Texas booted abortion provider Planned Parenthood from the state family planning program, unintended pregnancies decreased.  Aside from the decrease in unintended pregnancies, funding an organization that the majority of citizens morally oppose is not an appropriate means of distributing health services.  Planned Parenthood could at any time choose to stop committing abortions, and many Americans would be comfortable funding the organization.  Planned Parenthood executives have made clear time and again that they will continue to profit from abortions and refuse to compromise.

Third, Hooper makes much of the fact that the majority of women going to Planned Parenthood are older than 20.  This glosses over the many instances in which Planned Parenthood affiliates actively aided child sexual abusers and perpetrators of human trafficking.  A growing catalog documents the times Planned Parenthood failed to report sexual abuse, concealed the identity of pimps and abusers, and hurt women.

The women who came forward as part of the #MeToo campaign overcame the lie that they are powerless and voiceless.  By sharing their stories of assault, these women raised awareness about the vulnerability other women face and reclaimed their power.  The preborn are the voiceless.  They cannot speak out about the injustice of being killed violently in the womb.  They cannot join a social media campaign or sit for an interview on CNN.  We must be the voice for the voiceless in the face of one of the greatest injustices of our age: abortion.  Despite the misinformation recycled by abortion supporters, abortion is the taking of an innocent human Life, an injustice that we cannot ignore.