So I was talking with an intelligent African American woman—PHD and minister- the other day when she causally hit me with an ultra-conservative bombshell regarding abstinence, abortion and Planned Parenthood (P.P).
Basically, she informed me that P.P. was against abstinence so more teens would get pregnant and need more abortions which makes millions of dollars for P.P. Huh?
I said P.P. supports education on options that include abstinence, protected intimacy and the debatable termination of pregnancy. But could she believe that P.P. or any reasonable group is against teens refraining from intimacy. I spend a lot of time listening to views from across the spectrum but this wild view was too much.
So, my concern here is primarily with propaganda (from the left or right)—when groups knowingly create false information, ideas or concepts to mislead the well-intended. I invited her to write a guest post to explain her views.
Guest Post from B.V.
Bailout money for Planned Parenthood?
In a recent debate, I mistakenly described Planned Parenthood as a “for profit organization.” The reality is that Planned Parenthood is a profiting, non-profit organization that receives nearly 34% of its funding from taxpayer dollars, to the tune of more than $336 million annually. While Planned Parenthood representatives describe the organization as a civic-minded member of a progressive society, the truth is that Planned Parenthood has a capitalist agenda that undermines the interests of youth and families and uses taxpayer dollars to facilitate its lucrative cause.
While for profit and non-profit organizations share in the economic downturn of the century, Planned Parenthood boasts record earnings of $1.014 billion just for 2008. Performing 305,310 abortions on adults and underage girls in 2008, up from the 2006-2007 fiscal year when Planned Parenthood performed 289,570 abortions, the self-proclaimed advocate for women’s rights and family planning is lobbying congress for more taxpayer dollars. Planned Parenthood claimed to turn away as many as 100,000 would be contraceptive and family planning clients last year due a lack of sufficient funding.
When considering whether to include Planned Parenthood on the agenda for taxpayer bailout money, Congress should look closely at the organization’s expenditures. Last year, Planned Parenthood’s California divisions spent $5.1 million to lobby against Proposition 4, also known as Sarah’s Law. Sarah’s Law called for parental notification and a 48-hour waiting period before Planned Parenthood and other abortionists could perform an abortion on an underage girl. The defeated Sarah’s Law, named after a fifteen-year-old girl in Texas who received a botched abortion that cost her life, could have helped to ensure proper medical attention and protect young girls from adult male predators.
According to physician advocates of Proposition 4, if Sarah’s parents had known about her abortion, they could have intervened and Sarah could have received the medical attention needed to save her life instead of dying a lonely, miserable, premature death. Yet, Planned Parenthood rallied vigorously and successfully against Sarah’s law, preferring to forego parental notification and continue to perform tens of thousands of secret abortions on underage girls.
Wendy Wright, spokesperson for Concerned Women for America, asserts, “With Planned Parenthood’s record profits, it is funding a campaign to drum up opposition to abstinence programs and demand more government money. Americans should use Planned Parenthood’s Annual Report to show government officials that as tax dollars given to Planned Parenthood’s increase, so has its number of abortions.”
Planned Parenthood has had to contend with many lawsuits, including one for $50 million by the family of a 13-year-old girl who, after a botched abortion at Planned Parenthood, was left permanently injured and with parts of the torn apart fetus left inside the girl’s abdomen. At least this girl’s family knew of the abortion and could get her the medical attention needed to save her life.
Unfortunately, neither Sarah’s parents nor other uniformed parents had the chance to save their children’s or grandchildren’s lives.
Planned Parenthood thought it was worth it to turn away tens of thousands of clients for contraceptives and spend $5.1 million dollars, from an already strapped budget, to ensure that all parents in California would remain in the dark about secret abortions on children.
Irrespective of rhetoric, wherever an organization’s money is, their true agenda will be there too.
Project Logic Ga 
I would like to say that advancements in medical science might prove that the fetus actually experiences pain earlier than we knew twenty years ago. Healthcare coverage for more people will hopefully reduce abortions dramatically because people will talk with their doctors and not get pregnant in the first place.
Another issues that should be considered is when parents almost forcing pregnant teens to have the child (which I can respect) but are those parents therefore obligated to help provide for the child of their child for the next 18 years.
As a guy and a non-parent, I respectfully put these questions out there for discussion while understanding that I don’t really have “standing” in this debate—other than the fact that I am constantly seeing thugs in my community who I wished never walked this earth. I am not staying they should have been aborted; I am saying I wish their not-bright parents never got pregnant in the first place.
It sounds as if you consider Planned Parenthood a friend of our community. If that is true perhaps you did not listen closely enough to the woman who was sharing.
Planned Parenthood carefully crafts their words to persuade the African American community and others that they are our friend and that they are a reasonable, trusted reproductive health care provider. They repeatedly steer all conversation away from their true intent and the factual impact of their practices on communities such as ours. Planned Parenthood works to reimage the intent of their founders’ Negro Project, away from their desire to exterminate us and toward their carefully developed image of a reproductive health provider and advocate.
Planned Parenthood has carefully crafted an image as a friend of the poor and needy that provides education and other helpful services to aide in family planning. The truth however, reveals that, that image is nothing more than smoke and mirrors designed to suck you in and snare you on their web.
I have been asking this question for some time now, “what is the trusted reproductive health care they provide and what disease does it treat?” They distribute condoms (poorly manufactured ones that are more likely than less likely to break or come off during intercourse), birth control pills (ones that are low dose and more likely to fail) administer pregnancy tests and perform abortions. Hmm, that does not sound like health care to me, especially not abortion since pregnancy is not a disease. In fact, each one of these things results in more harm to our community than good: highest rate of sexually transmitted disease, higher rate of pregnancy, and proportionally higher rate of abortion.
In their 100 day plan provided to President Obama they advocate for the removal of abstinence only funding. If they were reasonable thinking people that are not against teens being abstinent they would not push for complete elimination of federal funding for this type of education, especially since they are getting over $330 million in taxpayer funds to support their racist agenda of eliminating the societal “weeds and misfits” typically black and poor.
Planned Parenthood continues to target blacks, the poor, and other minorities for extermination and the ever increasing number of abortions performed in their clinics document this. Today we have killed over fourteen million of our babies making us the second largest minority in America. Today we know that for every 9 black babies born, 10 die.
I urge you to wake up and join us in spreading the word concerning their true intent before there are no more of us to participate in their “trusted reproductive health” services that includes abstinence education!
Ms. Davis: thanks for your insight on this matter. Your point about abstinence only education is interesting. Again, I am carefully about personally discussing these matters; preferring to default to those of you with more knowledge as parents.
I can’t image the dilemma parents must face deciding between following their moral compass (just say no until you are married) and combating the “influences” bombarding the youth. When federal funding is involved, the situation gets particular sticky. I am learning a lot and thanks for taking the time to chime-in. If I may ask, are you the Ms. Davis who ran for congress in the past. It is good seeing African Americans not put all of our eggs in one political/policy basket.
We look forward to you knowledge and wisdom here.
Catherine I look forward to having you come on my radio program soon.
BV and Ms Davis, just a few of things.
You seem to be saying that PP is “bad” because they get government money, yet they do a lot of lobbying. I feel you’re being disingenuous here.
I don’t know about PP, but I do happen to know about non-profits. It is illegal to use government funds to lobby. If they are getting government funds, they should be accounting for in their reports on their services they provide. For example, they should be able to show it went to spending on education or other programs.
Now, If you can show that funds from the government were improperly diverted to lobbying, and that PP is committing accounting/tax fraud, I’d like to hear that. But what’s happening is, you’re implying that they’re committing fraud, when the facts you’re presenting don’t make that case at all.
PP IS in part a lobbying organization, they get money from people with the intention it will be used for lobbying. There is nothing wrong or bad about this (except that, of course, you don’t like what the money is being used for.)
And your comment that PP is somehow “bad” because they make a “profit”… this is also a sham argument. Any non-profit-whether it’s the NAACP, AARP, a zoo, a church-the goal is always to bring in more money than you spend. To do otherwise is to have a situation where the organization is losing money… and organizations that lose money go out of business.
Saying that they are “bad” because they are really a “for-profit” organization because they make money… that is a totally wounded piece of logic.
Question: one complaint mentioned is that PP doesn’t give out quality condoms or birth control drugs. Assuming that’s true, would you be willing to work with PP to provide better quality condoms and bc medicine? Or even give those things out yourselves? Just an idea…
Finally, BV and Ms Davis imply that PP is against abstinence. Clearly, PP is not against abstinence, they are against abstinence-ONLY approaches. I suggest this talk that PP is anti-abstinence be stopped; it’s false and misleading.
Like BV and Ms Davis, I agree that we have a lot of problems from bad sexual behavior in the black community. There are too many teen pregnancies, too many single unwed mothers/absent fathers, too much sexually transmitted disease. Something needs to be done.
I look for a more constructive and honest discussion of the issues from both sides.