Thursday marks Lobby Day on Capitol Hill for Planned Parenthood. If you’ve been on Capitol Hill lately, you may wonder how that makes it different from any other day recently, where “Will you stand with Planned Parenthood?” has replaced “What do you do?” — and the business-card exchange outside bars and offices has been replaced with petitions ready for your signature.
Ever since Lila Rose’s Live Action released videos showing Planned Parenthood officials’ willingness to aid and abet illegal activity — namely, sex trafficking — the nearly billion-dollar organization has been working overtime to protect its “brand.”
Brand is in quotes because it’s a quote from Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards (daughter of the late former Texas governor Ann Richards). She told Politico last month that “going after the strongest brand in women’s health in America is one of the stupidest things the Republican Party could have done.”
Stupid? Or effective? As defunding Planned Parenthood has become a rallying cry of not just pro-life activists but fiscal conservatives like Grover Norquist, its pretty-in-pink media and bipartisanly protected spin as a beacon of “women’s health” is coming undone.
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For decades, pro-life activists have been on to Planned Parenthood, its eugenic roots, and its abortion business, but finally, its well-protected spin has been penetrated. Its untouchable status as a beacon for women’s health has been revealed to be but a pink cloak covering a darker underbelly.
They rally for “women’s health” on the Hill Thursday — but under a cloud of increasing questions and skepticism about their mission. And even more fundamentally for members of Congress and the American taxpayer: about why they are receiving federal funding.
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You may have met Abby Johnson by now. She’s the former Planned Parenthood director who figured out how Planned Parenthood works and left — and now stars in TV and radio ads in the Washington, D.C., area courtesy of the Susan B. Anthony List and other groups. Her journey reflects, a bit, the politics of the moment.
Johnson, who first got involved with Planned Parenthood after an encounter at a volunteer fair, bought the “women’s health” talking points. But that positive image conceals the organization’s real business: abortion, as she would eventually see and reveal. It’s how they make their money and it’s where the lifestyles they encourage all too easily lead.
Johnson, who writes about her journey in her book, Unplanned (which she talks about at length here), began to realize these things after her own second abortion. She began to connect the dots, as she saw so many women come to her clinic for multiple abortions, despite using contraception (it’s not foolproof, contrary to the message we’re so often told to give kids). She began to realize that, as she — a clinic director — was given increased abortion goals.
So much for the “rare,” in Bill Clinton’s infamous “safe, legal, and rare.”
So pro-life activists are on to Planned Parenthood's eugenic roots?
We're on to the "Southern Strategy" racist roots of the Republican Party -- far more recent and therefore far more relevant.
The Southern Strategy really happened, and it happened recently, and it realigned the racist elements of the South, attracting those elements to the Republican Party. I'm not sure that eugenics is at all a matter of discussion inside Planned Parenthood these days, but I am sure that Republican Party leaders, even today, talk among themselves about how to not to offend the aging, white, racist remnant who migrated in the 1960's from one side of the political fence to the other.
And I am being generous by limiting this to the South.
This is what happens when you try to throw canards into what is otherwise a defensible piece of criticism. If it's relevant that Planned Parenthood happened to be founded by wackos way back when who believed in eugenics, then it's relevant to say that the Republican Party is tainted by racism. This is the Victor Davis Hanson school of political journalism: Get the epithets into the piece, so as to appeal to the emotions of readers, not the brains.
MikeB:
The repulsive eugenic hopes of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger are beyond question. In her own writing she referred to non-whites as "human weeds" who need to be uprooted from society. It is no coincidence that today, Planned Parenthood predominantly "services" that segment of society Sanger targeted so long ago. It is gross to demagogue about chimerical racial offenses of the Republican Party when confronted with the evidence of Planned Parenthood's founding principles chewed, swallowed and digested. The result is the slaughter of millions of innocent babies. If you are so concerned with tracing the roots of pernicious modern racial attitudes, why not start with the pro-slavery position of the Democratic Party in the antebellum South?
MikeB: What exactly is the connection you are trying to make?
The only real planning PP is doing is allowing a woman to plan when she actually wants to have a child. They enable her to take care of those "unplanned" children.
Another question I have is what exactly do mammogram services have to do with "reproductive rights" anyway. Seems to me to be like discussing where to put a new highway in and someone wants to know where the gas stations will be.
Just as an aside, Ms. Richards, the grande dame of PP is married to a man who is an executive with.......SEIU. Shocking!
People on the Left violently reject eugenicists. People on the Right claim to, and then rather than shunning them, invite them to their protest-inciting mock debates which wind up drawing pleasant applause from proto-Nazis.
1. If conservatives are truly outraged by subsidizing a profitable company, shouldn't they target GE and oil companies? I don't believe either serves low-income women with cheap pap smears and contraceptions. But the tax breaks that oil companies get do go to CEO compensation and stock buybacks, two bedrock values championed by our founding fathers. External Link
2. "Taxpayers are borrowing heavily from their children and grandchildren to fund programs...depleting the ranks of those children and grandchildren..this is a recipe for [a financial] trainwreck.”
Nice to see that NR is endorsing the Santorum view of women's bodies: incubators for tomorrow's tax-payers.
But as I always say, if you want women to bear children, you got to incentivize them. A woman will be much more likely to keep a pregnancy if she knows that her baby will grow in financial security.
I'm not sure how the existence of Planned Parenthood accounts for the high rate of abortions in the black population. There seems to be a wide variety of factors contributing to this statistic including an avoidance of contraceptives. Planned Parenthood provides cheap, easy access to birth control which is their primary service even if their "profits" come from abortions.
ArielD, GE is Obama's baby. He appointed their CEO, who received bailout money from the democrats to the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Republicans are against bailouts.
MikeB:
Do you really think conservatives have a fondness for proto-Nazis, crypto-Nazis, neo-Nazis or any other kind of Nazis? I'm sure you know about the game of setting up a straw man in an argument. As a conservative, I have never heard Nazis spoken of with anything but contempt and loathing. Lately, it is Muslims and their liberal defenders who show sympathy with Nazi aims and philosophy. How tediously predictable you chose the tired old cannard of Nazi sympathy to hurl at Republicans when Margaret Sanger actively collaborated with Nazi eugenecists and you know that she did.
I agree, Obamma hand-picking Jeffrey Immelt as a model CEO was just plain daft. And Democrats should definitely be held accountable for giving away immoral corporate tax breaks (looking at you Charlie Rangel). But the response to that should be MAKE GE PAY TAXES, not "this shows GE is doing something right!" a la Newt Gingrich. I know Conservatives are very eager to cut corproate taxes, but I don't see the same eagerness to eliminate loopholes.
And Republicans are against bailouts? Which president signed TARP into law? And why would Republicans be against the Dodd-Frank bill that allows the government to liquidate financial companies without going thru bankrupcy and thus avoid bailouts? Interesting.
It's interesting to read Mike B's posts. He almost never tries to directly confront the point of the article on which he comments. Rather, he resorts to the old schoolyard taunt of, "Oh Yeah? Well you did it first, and you are worse thean me!"
One hates to generalize, but this method of "arguing" seems to be pretty common amongst progressives. Tell us, Mike B. What do you think of the way PP markets its services to women in general, and minority women in particular? In my view the answer to that question has nothing to do with the history of the Republican Party.
Cherub: The canard party started with the eugenics stuff.
Nobody sits around Planned Parenthood thinking, "We're making the world better by eliminating undesirable people."
I am sure people sit around Planned Parenthood thinking, "We are making the world better by helping people who others might call undesirable relieve themselves of tremendous burdens for their own good." But that's not eugenics. That's abortion for convenience.
Sure, you can get all over that -- paternalism, whether an inch-long thingie is a human being, etc. But the eugenics canard is nothing but.
I am not arguing with the substance of the piece. I am pointing out the method by which the argument is made. It's dog-whistle stuff, like "inch-long thingie." Get it?
My point is about HOW the point gets made. My point is, if you bet me Margaret Sanger, I see you and raise you Southern Strategy, which is more recent and relevant as a matter of fact, as opposed to Planned Parenthood's eugenicist roots, which are now completely irrelevant since that's totally outside the mindset of those who operate the place. In that regard, I point you to a piece about an event in which conservatives purposely invited a scheitstorm by staging a mock debate between a eugenicist and a conservative -- and the eugenicist wasn't booed out of the room by YAF-types but instead politely applauded.
Like southern apologists who celebrate the most unpatriotic act in American history -- a war whose very goal was to dissolve our nation -- and call it "tradition." No liberals there, you can be sure.
You have to see through this stuff. That's what canards are about.
What exactly is your problem with the way that PP "markets itself" to black women? Does PP encourage black women to have abortions while encouraging white women to give birth, irrespective of any other factors? That would be an interesting charge and I would love to see evidence for that. Absent your evidence, you're saying that low-income women include black women, pp serves low-income women, therefore pp serves black low income women. Should black women be denied abortion and contraceptives? I really don't understand the argument here.
Greg: It's astoundingly ironic that my posts about the way respected conservative commentators resort to canards are criticized by you on the basis of how I make my point.
Do you get that I'm not commenting on whether abortion or Planned Parenthood is a good thing or a bad thing, but that resorting to canards corrupts the argument?
Let's put aside the arguments about eugenics and who said what first. I ask, why does Washington subsidize the shabby, ill-considered care that Planned Parenthood provides?
In the communities in which I have practiced, PP clinics are appalling, they would be a sad joke if they were not serious. These PPs hire the least capable gynecologists, docs who are barely capable of keeping their practices running. The quality of care provided is very variable, common and easily evaluated medical conditions are glossed over, etc etc.
When I have hired mid-level practitioners away from PP to work in my own practice, they are always amazed by how much better care one can provide in a 20 or 30 minute visit, versus 10, a visit in which a history is taken, labs are reviewed and a differential diagnosis is considered.
I fail to see why a nickel of governmant money should go to an organization that provides poor care to the allegedly underserved community, when in fact our local teaching hospital and our local practice organizations provide better care to the same population for the same price, without pushing patients to abort.
I think we all agree that the practice of abortion is abhorent.
We have made the comparisons to the waiting period for buying handguns.
Perhaps we should also make the requirement to have abortion providers to pay $1,000 per operation instead of subsidizing the practice. Then we could see if they become rarer faster.
If there is a shutdown and it comes that the reason was holding the line on PP funding, it is not going to go well with independent voters or free market republicans. Republicans should not get over ideological on this issue, they should continue to focus on balancing the budget and free market economics. Leave the cultural wars for another day.
You make a concern troll argument. You're not for defunding health services for women, just shabby services. Which you claim is what PP provides, in addition to "pushing" women to abort (goet evidence of that?). The thing is, it's not young women, including women from marginalized communities, who receive assistance from PP that are clamoring for it to be defunded. It's affluent middle-aged white Republican men in congress. And it's not as if Republicans launched a women's health taskforce that studied the issue carefully and concluded that you could boost women's health thru reallocation of funds. Republicans just said "PP provides abortion, therefore we'll defund its health services to poor women. Unleash life!"
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