Alternet provides details about a conference call Media Matters convened with Planned Parenthood to try to make their Live Action headache stop. On it, we learn:
Cecile Richards urged progressive bloggers to spread the word that Planned Parenthood’s clients desperately need the health care provided to them by Planned Parenthood clinics, explaining that for many of the women who come in for basic gynecological services, Planned Parenthood provides the only health care they receive. Media Matters Executive Vice President Ari Rabin-Havt announced that his organization will continue be on the trail of Live Action, debunking the organization’s claims, and focusing on its methods.
But young Lila Rose and her team aren’t the problem here. Sometimes independent investigators can be of a real service.
If Planned Parenthood were truly the champion of women it purports to be and is regularly hailed as, wouldn’t Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards be more concerned about the possibility that aiding sex traffickers happens as a matter of routine at the clinics that bear Planned Parenthood’s name? A clear takeaway from the Live Action videos we have seen this week seems to be that Planned Parenthood condones advising pimps. Even when the prostitutes are underage. That’s something Planned Parenthood — regardless of their future federal aid status — ought to address. And it’s something we ought to insist they do.
There is, of course, the additional question of: Why are we funding the nation’s largest abortion provider? Because they also provide basic medical care to poor women? They are not the only clinics providing these services.
Young Lila Rose has given us a real opportunity. We ought to have a serious conversation about how best to really help women — and without not only offending the moral consciences of millions of taxpayers but without treating fertility as a disease and new life as a problem to solve. Not to mention keeping sex traffickers in business.
BTW: It’s not by accident Rich mentioned William Wilberforce yesterday in his column.
(In case you missed the videos: Planned Parenthood, ‘Safe Haven’ for Sex Trafficking: A Shocking, Breaking Video; Breaking: Planned Parenthood in Richmond Provides Sex-Trafficking Advice; Breaking: Another Day, Three More Live Action Videos)