Planned Parenthood’s ‘Mission’

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

In a recent event of concern to pro-life advocates, presidential daughter and advisor Ivanka Trump met privately with Planned Parenthood (PP) president Cecile Richards.

A subsequent New York Times profile on Ivanka contained somewhat-reassuring information about the meeting which confirmed PP’s commitment to its central purpose, providing abortions-on-demand: "[Ivanka] had a proposal: Planned Parenthood should split in two, Ms. Trump suggested, with a smaller arm to provide abortions and a larger one devoted to women’s health services. White House officials said Ms. Trump was trying to find a common-sense solution amid the roar of abortion politics."

Many pro-lifers might accept Ivanka’s solution. If Planned Parenthood were to split into two financially-separate, legally-distinct organizations, otherwise-fungible public money earmarked for health services couldn’t fund abortion.

"Fungibility" is a characteristic of commodities whose forms are interchangeable. A bushel of the same grade of Iowa-grown and Illinois-grown corn has the same value. A $50 loan may be repaid in two twenties and a ten or five rolls of quarters.

That’s why PP’s insistence that $500 million it receives from taxpayers for "health services" isn’t used for abortions is patently false. Because money is fungible, public money PP receives ostensibly for services other than abortions frees other cash assets for abortion activities, PP’s central purpose.

Planned Parenthood’s public image is dependent on obscuring that central purpose. A National Right to Life Committee poll revealed that fifty-five percent of Americans don’t even know Planned Parenthood performs abortions. But, according to Planned Parenthood’s annual report, in 2015, their clinics and affiliates performed 323,999 abortions. Over a decade, PP performed more than 3 million.

323,999 abortions is 27,000 abortions per month (clinics average 26-day operating schedules), 1038 abortions per (average) eight-hour clinic day. That’s 130 abortions every "business" hour, more than two every minute.

Planned Parenthood has been caught offering sex-selective abortions, misinforming women about the facts of pregnancy, imposing abortion quotas on clinics, selling baby parts, lying about abortion-related fatalities and about offering mammograms (they don’t). PP has covered up child sex trafficking, failed to report child rape and opposed protections for babies born alive following botched abortions.

In 2013, Florida legislators considering a bill requiring abortionists to provide medical care to infants surviving abortions were shocked when, during a committee hearing, a PP official endorsed a right to post-birth abortion. Representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, Alisa LaPolt Snow testified that her organization believes that the decision to kill an infant surviving a failed abortion rests with the abortion-seeker and her abortionist. In a sane world, that’s homicide.

More Times: "But Planned Parenthood officials said they thought Ms. Trump’s advice was naïve, failing to understand how central reproductive choice was to the group’s mission."

Together, "reproductive" and "choice" are weasel words meaning "killing developing, often fully-developed, pain-capable children."

Revealingly, Richards rejected Ivanka’s reasonable compromise. If Planned Parenthood’s central purpose were really "women’s health services," Richards would have accepted it.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose taxpayer-funded abortions. Accordingly, Congress should defund Planned Parenthood.

http://www.ldnews.com/story/opinion/2017/05/24/planned-parenthoods-mission/343117001/