GIRL SCOUTS Partner with Planned Parenthood; AMERICAN HERITAGE GIRLS Introduce “Respect Life” Merit Badge

If it’s Girl Scout cookie time, you can bet it’s also cookie boycott time! I’ve been seeing the pro’s and con’s on social media—It’s a topic about which people feel strongly.

I wrote a few years ago about why I no longer supported the Girl Scouts’ cookie campaign.

When the many controversies first emerged regarding the Scouts and Planned Parenthood, the Scouts and marriage equality, the Scouts and contraception…I was torn. I love Girl Scout cookies, and I’m sympathetic toward the doe-eyed little girls selling cookies outside the supermarket.

I came to believe, though, that my “No” should be “No”–that I could not, in good conscience, support an organization which has aligned itself with abortion advocates, taught about “reproductive health”, accepted to membership a transgender male who “identifies as a girl”, and partnered with Planned Parenthood, (The Girl Scouts organization has denied this partnership with the abortion organization, but they have a hard time explaining that troubling video featuring Girl Scouts CEO Kathy Cloninger admitting to it on national TV.)

But there’s another option.

Many concerned parents, watching the Girl Scouts they so enjoyed in their own youth veer sharply left into liberal sexual politics, are enrolling their daughters the alternative “Christ-centered” American Heritage Girls. The Christian girls’ group has grown more than 40 percent over the past few years. There are now 32,000 members of American Heritage Girls worldwide—17,000 of them here in the United States.

And here’s the thing I especially want to tell you:

American Heritage Girls has just unveiled a “Respect Life” merit badge! Patti Garibay, executive director of American Heritage Girls, said American Heritage Girls members had been pushing for a way to honor girls’ involvement in pro-life activities.

“They really wanted to have something that would recognize those efforts,” Garibay told The Blaze.

“…There was even a troop up in Michigan that created their own patch,” she said, adding that the new badge fits perfectly with American Heritage Girls’ “biblical worldview that respects life.”