Obama: “God bless” Planned Parenthood

April 29, 2013 By 22 Comments

Rev. Michael Schuermann calls out the president for confusing his office and for taking God’s name in vain:

President Obama spoke to Planned Parenthood this morning (Friday, April 26th). He said all sorts of things. Yet what was most galling, at least in my mind, is how he ended his speech. Here’s what he said:

“As long as we’ve got to fight to make sure women have access to quality, affordable health care, and as long as we’ve got to fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that you’ve also got a president who’s going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way,” said Obama. “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you.”

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Church, Government, Life Issues, Vocation Tagged With: , , , , 22 Comments

Pro-whatever-the-situation-is

January 16, 2013 By 78 Comments

Planned Parenthood is finding that the label “pro-choice” is too limiting and is searching for new language:

“I’m neither pro-choice nor pro-life,” said one woman in a focus group commissioned by Planned Parenthood. “I’m pro-whatever-the-situation is.” Said another, “there should be three: pro-life, pro-choice and something in the middle that helps people understand circumstances [...] It’s not just back or white, there’s grey.” A recent research push by the organization found that large numbers of Americans feel this way — uncomfortable with both the pro-life and pro-choice labels. And so Planned Parenthood’s newest messaging will be moving away from the language of choice. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Language, Life Issues, Philosophy Tagged With: , , , 78 Comments

Planned Parenthood as political organization

December 12, 2012 By 44 Comments

The most effective political organization in America, judged by the recent elections, is Planned Parenthood.  As reported by Sarah Kliff:

Planned Parenthood Action Fund earned an honor this campaign cycle that had nothing to do with women’s health: It was the most effective political group in the 2012 election.

Over 98 percent of its spending was in races that ended with the desired result, according to an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation.

Planned Parenthood pulled this off, pollsters and strategists say, with a two-pronged strategy. First, it turned Mitt Romney’s words against him. Then the group used algorithms to identify a group of 1 million female voters, largely in swing states, who were particularly receptive to the group’s message. . . .

Planned Parenthood started with focus groups in the spring, trying to figure out how much voters knew about Romney’s positions on women’s health issues. The answer seemed to be: not a lot. . . .

After that, O’Rourke and her team began testing out what messages worked best to define Romney. They would put up online ads that had personal messages or ones that leveraged Planned Parenthood as an authority on women’s health. . . .

Figuring out the best message was only half the puzzle; Planned Parenthood had to figure out who would be most receptive to their ideas. For that, they turned to micro-targeting, identifying 1 million female voters who were likely to support legal abortion and the health law’s contraceptive mandate.

The group spent about $15 million this year, more than tripling the $4 million it spent in 2008. It wanted to make sure those dollars were targeting the voters who would be open to their message.

“Those were the women that we were going to relentlessly target over and over and over again between June and November,” says Planned Parenthood Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens.

If you were among the women in that group who lived in Virginia, you received five pieces of direct mail and dozens of phone calls. You would get visits from canvassers, who might hand you a folded-up brochure, styled to look like a pocketbook, that told you Mitt Romney could cost you $407,000 over your lifetime by not supporting no co-pay birth control or equal pay legislation.

via Inside Planned Parenthood’s campaign strategy.

My first reaction is to wonder if conservatives and pro-lifers could ever get that sophisticated.  My second reaction is to think that no one should be so manipulative and mendacious.   “Romney will cost you $407,000.”  I’m sure many of these scientifically-targeted and brow-beaten women thought, “But I don’t have $407,000″ and voted accordingly.

Filed Under: Life Issues, Politics Tagged With: , , 44 Comments

More bullying from Planned Parenthood

February 17, 2012 By 22 Comments

Now Planned Parenthood has released its minions on a Wisconsin food pantry for the poor:

One thing we learned from the Komen/Planned Parenthood fiasco is that it may be easier to say no to the mob than Planned Parenthood. We saw it again recently in Green Bay, Wisconsin. This one didn’t make much news, but created a local social network bully fest.

Planned Parenthood called Paul’s Pantry, part of the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the biggest food pantry in Wisconsin, and asked them to come and pick up donations, which may have been noble, but wasn’t something the Catholic organization felt comfortable doing — sending a truck over and perhaps giving the abortion provider a photo opportunity. The American Life League reports what the worker at the pantry said:

“All I told the young lady from Planned Parenthood was that I couldn’t send a truck to pick up, and gave her a list of other food pantries that might want to pick up, I gave her no reason at all and she didn’t ask why. Soon after, I started receiving the hate e-mail and phone calls. I politely explained to callers that although we are non-denominational in regards to those we serve, we are a Catholic organization who shares a board of directors with our sister organization, St. Vincent de Paul. We adhere to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church and to the Rule of St. Vincent de Paul. I also explained our Gift Acceptance Policy and how acceptance of the donation would compromise our core values and possibly damage the reputation of Paul’s Pantry.”

As with Komen, choice wasn’t okay with Planned Parenthood, and within a short amount of time, verbal abuse rolled in. Jill Stanek reports that a worker at Paul’s Pantry explained:

“Within 20 minutes I was getting phone calls and emails calling us [names]. The calls that day came from the Milwaukee area, where Planned Parenthood is headquartered. We have caller ID.”

[He] said he did tell one of the callers they could simply drop off their donation, “which happens about 100 times a day – in that case we don’t know where the food comes from. But if an organization wants a receipt, Paul’s Pantry has a gift acceptance policy. “If the donation is going to hurt us, we don’t accept it.”

Craig said it never got to that point with Planned Parenthood, though. PP invented the rest of the story. “What was their purpose?” asked Paul. “If they really intended to feed the poor they should have just dropped the food off and left it at that. But was it for their own self-promotion?”

The abuse didn’t stop there, though. First, Planned Parenthood broadcast it to their Facebook page on February 2:

Then Daily Kos got in on the action and bashed the pantry, then listed the phone number and the employee names and told people to call in protest.

Which resulted in a massive deluge of verbal abuse.  (Follow the link for examples and more details.)

via Now Planned Parenthood bullies Catholic food bank for saying no to them | LifeSiteNews.com.

HT:  Mary

Filed Under: Life Issues Tagged With: 22 Comments

The Church of Planned Parenthood

February 10, 2012 By 22 Comments

Mollie Hemingway on the uproar over the Susan G. Komen foundation (which is devoted to fighting breast cancer) and its short-lived decision to stop giving money to Planned Parenthood.

If you thought that the media were irreligious, you were proved wrong. They couldn’t be more religious. It’s just that their church is Planned Parenthood. Their sacrament is abortion. Any attack against their church, such as Susan G. Komen’s decision to stop funding Planned Parenthood, has been met with the most fervent defense of the faith I’ve ever seen. Never mind that Planned Parenthood doesn’t even do mammograms. Never mind that the money in question is a small fraction of either organization’s budget.

Over at GetReligion, I look at some of the more egregious examples. But even these are only a small fraction of what’s coming down the pike in an unrelenting barrage in defense of Planned Parenthood.

And the Church of Planned Parenthood reigns supreme. They have vanquished their enemies and accomplished what they wanted. Komen funds will once again be funneled to a $1 billion organization that terminates 330,000 pregnancies a year.

via The Church of Planned Parenthood – Ricochet.com.

I offer this just as a brief introduction to Mollie’s in depth analysis of the story and its media coverage at the said Get Religion site  here.

Filed Under: Life Issues, Media, Religions Tagged With: , 22 Comments

Pro-abortionists have the money and the power

February 8, 2012 By 32 Comments

Russell D. Moore at Christianity Today on the Susan G. Komen foundation’s caving to Planned Parenthood:

This is an important victory for Planned Parenthood and the abortion rights lobby. First of all, the association with Komen is a key piece in Planned Parenthood’s effort to present itself as a “women’s health provider” rather than simply as an abortion provider. Beyond that, the surrender of the nation’s leading breast cancer awareness group to this kind of political pressure proves the clout of Planned Parenthood and their allies.

Evangelical and Catholic Christians, and our pro-life allies of all faiths, might be tempted to draw some wrong conclusions from this tragic affair. After all our years of trumpeting opinion polls showing a “pro-life majority” in the United States, this demonstrates that, when it comes to money and power, the pro-choice forces aren’t sustained simply by the penumbra and emanations of an old Supreme Court decision.

Some pro-life persons might wish that the Christian churches had as much influence in the public arena as Planned Parenthood, that we were able to mobilize as many callers and threaten as many boycotts. Some might see this as a sign that we need more money and respect. After all, if some Christian foundation had more financial firepower than Planned Parenthood, Komen might have stood firm.

In all of this, though, we can gain an opportunity to see what the abortion culture is all about: cash. Planned Parenthood and their allies use the thoroughly American language of freedom of choice and women’s empowerment, but what’s at stake, as seen here, are billions of dollars. That’s why, despite their talk about adoption as a “choice,” Planned Parenthood and others hardly ever lead women through an adoption process relative to how often they promise them the “fix” of a “terminated pregnancy.” There’s a profit motive involved in every abortion.

Christians shouldn’t be surprised by any of this. Money and power, abstracted from the lordship of Christ, always lead to violence. Pharaoh ordered the execution of the Hebrew children because they threatened his position in “the 1 percent” of ancient Egypt. Herod carried out the same decree because he wanted to protect his kingship, a kingship that carried with it the financial support of the Roman Empire.

No one, Jesus told us, can serve both God and Mammon. In saying this, Jesus personalized money in a disturbing way. When capital becomes God it, somehow, is no longer something, but someone. The demonic force of rapaciousness so distorts the soul that, when it’s threatened, someone is going to die.

The answer for those of us who cherish the lives of women and their children, regardless of stage of development, isn’t to long to compete with Planned Parenthood in the influence that comes with massive amounts of wealth. It’s instead to see, first of all, how our own captivity to Mammon devolves us in the same way.

via The Pink Ribbon and the Dollar Sign | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction.

The author goes on to exhort Christians to stop their emphasis on money and power.

He is surely right to criticize the worldliness of contemporary churches–manifested especially in those that proclaim the “prosperity gospel,” but also in the general deference we tend to pay to wealth and power.

And yet, if we are to battle legalized abortion, don’t Christians have to pursue the power to change the laws?  Don’t pro-life organizations need more money?  Might we become so spiritual that we withdraw from the world’s concerns and thus become complicit in the institutionalized slaughter that is the abortion industry? Don’t the world’s battles require the world’s weapons, and isn’t this legitimate in our vocation as citizens in God’s kingdom of the left?

By the way, I like Dr. Moore’s phrase” Evangelical and Catholic Christians, and our pro-life allies of all faiths.”  This is not just a Catholic issue!  All conservative Christian organizations will be put into the position of having to pay for not just birth control pills but also abortion pills.

UPDATE:  See also Mollie Hemingway’s more hopeful article in Christianity Today entitled “The Komen Fiasco’s Silver Lining.”   She points out how at least the affair unveils (1) that the Komen foundation funds abortions (2) that Planned Parenthood, contrary to the common assumption, does NOT provide mammograms  (3) that the media is flagrantly biased in favor of abortion (4) that Planned Parenthood practices extortion.

Filed Under: Government, Law, Life Issues, Medicine, Politics, Vocation Tagged With: , , , 32 Comments