A Pledge of Love, and a Request for Intellectual Honesty, in the Planned Parenthood Scandal

Penny Young Nance was one of the speakers last week at a #WomenBetrayed rally in Washington, D.C., one of many rallies throughout the country at which Americans responded to the ongoing revelations about Planned Parenthood and the harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts. Nance is CEO of Concerned Women for America; here, she talks about the news and about finding a better way.

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Do you really love pro-choice women, as you said at last week’s rally? Do you love Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards?

PENNY YOUNG NANCE: Yes, I love pro-choice women. It breaks my heart that they have been hurt and deceived. I am particularly saddened by the young women who feel they have no choice but to abort their baby. It’s funny you should ask me this, because it’s something I have been thinking and praying about recently. Cecile Richards is a much harder question, and I am going to answer you honestly. I struggle to love someone who is so destructive, but my conscience has been stirred on this very point this week. I am praying to love my enemy — because that’s the test, right? Anyone can love a friend, but only someone with the love of Christ in her heart can love her enemies and pray for them. I am with all humility asking God for that. I really did feel that for Kate Michelman of NARAL, but I struggle. I want to feel compassion for everyone. I am broken just like her, and I need to remember that. I just despise that she profits from misery.

LOPEZ: Isn’t this attack against organ-harvesting just a way to get at a goal you’ve long had: ending abortion in America?

NANCE: I so want to end abortion in America, because it kills babies and wounds their mothers. However, it’s also true that Planned Parenthood is doing despicable things with our tax dollars. One in every four abortions done in this nation is performed at a Planned Parenthood clinic, and 97 percent of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy services are abortions. They have been caught red-handed: aiding abetting people they believed were sex traffickers, targeting non-white babies, failing to report statutory rape, and supporting sex-selection abortions, to name a few things. This latest scandal of their selling dead-baby parts is nothing new. But now, even people who aren’t pro-life are fed up. In purely economic terms, the nation is $18 trillion in debt — why are we spending half a billion per year to subsidize death?

LOPEZ: Where are women supposed to go for birth control if they don’t have the money? Do you really want to outlaw birth control?

NANCE: First of all, CWA membership is mostly Evangelical women, and most of us have used birth control in some form. We do not take a position on birth control — only on post-fertilization methods such as Plan B and Ella, which makes them abortifacients. The U.S. currently spends billions per year to help poor women get gynecological care. And if we choose to stop funding Planned Parenthood, this will not change. There are 9,000 community health centers and Medicaid options. Planned Parenthood has hijacked Title X funding, but Senator Joni Ernst’s Senate bill (S. 1881) and others seek to shift the money to other avenues for health care that is comprehensive — but not abortion. Let’s also put in perspective that a monthly supply of birth-control pills costs only $9 at Target. Planned Parenthood wants to pretend that the world will fall apart without them, but the truth is that what they contribute is big-business abortion, politically leftist influence, and a coarsening of our culture.

LOPEZ: Where are women who go to Planned Parenthood for other things supposed to go? Are there really enough community health centers around? And don’t Republicans usually want to defund them, too?

NANCE: The main reason Republicans have disfavored Title X funding is that Planned Parenthood has abused the program. Conservatives favor block-granting these services to states and local entities that function closest to the women they serve. Washington tends to get it wrong, as we have seen with the pipeline of unaccountable cash flowing to big abortion under the auspices of gynecological care. Having said that, Senator Ernst’s approach is a good one, and Concerned Women for America fully supports her efforts.

LOPEZ: If a woman came up to you on the way out of your office today and said she was pregnant and had an appointment for an abortion tomorrow, and she asked why you wanted to keep her from it, what would you say to her?

NANCE: I would say that I know she is scared, but that what might seem like a simple answer to her problem is no solution at all. Going to a clinic and paying people to rip apart the limbs of the baby in your womb rots your very soul and assaults your conscience. What got her to this position is so much deeper, and she needs help spiritually, physically, and maybe financially. CWA can connect her to the resources she needs on all those fronts. There are much better ways to deal with the crisis of an unplanned pregnancy than the cheap and violent end to her baby’s life. Other solutions including adoption are redemptive and life-affirming. They are hard, but there is nothing quick and easy about abortion. In fact, it has life-long consequences for a mother.

LOPEZ: If a woman told you how traumatized she was on account of your keeping these videos about Planned Parenthood in the headlines, what would you say to her?

NANCE: I don’t doubt that women who have had abortions are further traumatized by the news that their baby’s parts might have been sold by Planned Parenthood. Their anger belongs there. I would connect her with post-abortion counseling services, because with or without this latest scandal, she is probably dealing with a deep hurt. However, we cannot end this evil practice if people are not told about it.

LOPEZ: Who are your pro-life heroes, people really making life possible for women who are scared or alone?

NANCE: Thousands of Concerned Women for America members and other grassroots activists are my heroes. They are on the front lines of this battle, volunteering and supporting women in medical clinics or through social services such as job training, food and clothing, and child care. They take women into their churches and their homes. They are the tangible evidence of Christ’s love. They are the opposite of the empty promises and harmful “care” that Planned Parenthood scams people into supporting, to the tune of half a billion taxpayer dollars each year.

LOPEZ: What do you hope comes of this current scandal? Is that what you’d call it?

NANCE: Yes, it’s scandalous. This should be a wake-up call to our entire nation. Whether or not you agree with me that life begins at conception and deserves protection, most clear-thinking people can agree that there is something desperately wrong with an organization that profits from hurt women and dead babies.

LOPEZ: What are you asking of presidential candidates when it comes to Planned Parenthood?

NANCE: We are asking both governors and presidential candidates to pledge that they’d stop funding entities that perform abortion. The accounting shell game that PPA plays is laughable, and everyone knows it. We are also calling on them to pass the Pain Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. This bill prohibits abortion at five months’ gestation and later. The recent PPA videos in the news clearly show that the older babies are more profitable, which raises the question: Why is this even legal? Yes, I want abortion to end, but we must first convince the public that babies who have a beating heart, and fingers, toes, and eyebrows — who can hear and respond to their mother’s voice and can feel pain — deserve our protection as part of the human family. The public is with us on this issue. Now is the time to act.

LOPEZ: What would you ask pro-choice Americans to consider today?

NANCE: I ask them to set aside labels and to consider science. The sonogram has taken away any doubt about life. They know that at 18 days there is a detectable beating heart. I ask them to consider where we should draw the line on life. Surely the Supreme Court’s decision of Roe v. Wade doesn’t reflect what science has proven to be true. Again, maybe they do not agree with me that life begins at conception, but then where do they think it begins? They do not agree with Cecile Richards that babies should have legal protection only at birth. At some point, this becomes a debate about real estate. I would ask them for intellectual honesty on the issue.

LOPEZ: What are you grateful for?

NANCE: I am grateful for my family, my husband, Will, and my two kids. I am grateful that all of us have good health and love one another. I am grateful that God has given me a job I love, working with people I love. I am grateful that I was born an American with all the opportunity and liberty that comes with that. Most of all, I am grateful for the grace and mercy of God’s forgiveness and Jesus’s sacrifice for my sin. I would be lost, in every sense of that word, without my faith.