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Townhall...
Planned
Parenthood’s Grand Delusion
by Bill
Murchison
Feb 07,
2012
Go the
website PlannedParenthood.org.
You know,
Planned Parenthood, around whose rippling banner enlightened opinion
rallied
last week when news broke that Susan G. Komen for the Cure would, in
the near
future, cease granting it money. PP -- just a big-hearted service
organization
for women, fighting breast cancer and other female afflictions with
might and
main. One could buy into that sales pitch on the basis of the Category
5
hurricane that PP caused to sweep across the landscape.
Check out
their website. Click on “abortion.” “(A) safe and legal way to end
pregnancy,”
PP calls it. Where to get one? Why, at one of “many Planned Parenthood
health
centers.” Or learn how you may “Take medicines to end an early
pregnancy” --
medicines both “safe and effective.”
Birth
control? It “allows us to prevent pregnancy and plan the timing of
pregnancy.”
Abstinence-only programs for pregnancy prevention? They “often provide
inaccurate and alarmist misinformation about the effectiveness of
condoms,
contraceptives and safer sex.”
Speaking of
safer sex, suppose a theoretical teenager decides to undertake sexual
coupling.
“Are there any guidelines?” Oh, yes. “Both people should want to have
sex.”
“Use birth control ... “ and “Be clear with each other about what you
do and
don’t want to do” -- among other things.
“Am I ready
for sex?” asks Theoretical Teenager. It depends on things such as “your
personal values and goals” and the “kind of emotional and physical
risks you
are willing to take.” (Certainly not on the moral prescriptions that
held sway
among us up to half a century ago, e.g., sex-within-marriage as the
ideal as
well as safest state!)
Oh, then
there’s the matter of same-sex relationships. Let us remember, counsels
PP,
that “Sexual orientation and gender are fundamental parts of who we
are.” Alas,
“In our society there is a lot of homophobia ... It’s caused by
ignorance or
other kinds of misinformation and lack of understanding about what LGBT
(Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) people are really like.”
Mmm-hmm --
just your mainstream mouthpiece for sexual liberation in all its varied
forms.
Would that not be a fair description of the Planned Parenthood
Federation of
America -- a self-styled, innocent victim of a drive-by bashing by “the
far
right,” to borrow the coinage of the PP-supporting Lee and Amy Fikes
Foundation
of Dallas?
In the
cultural shoot-’em-up that ended -- sort of -- when Komen decided not
to defund
after all, the shoe has conspicuously gotten on the wrong foot. The
Komen
foundation didn’t show much public relations sense in the way it
handled its PP
relationship. But of all organizations to hide behind its own injured
feelings
-- PP! If it has in fact become so mainstream as to arouse all the
defensive
instincts of the liberal establishment (New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg,
California Sen. Barbara Boxer, The New York Times, etc.) America’s
worst
problems may not be economic. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re not.
I confess
to having snored through past conservative jeremiads concerning PP. No
more.
Clearly PP enjoys First Amendment rights to preach any gospel of moral
decomposition it cares to preach. Only not -- please! -- from the
pinnacle of
sanctity it sees itself as perched upon.
As a
promoter of women’s health, PP doubtless deserves some credit -- in
some cases,
one is sure, a lot. What it doesn’t deserve is exemption from moral
norms --
norms that, truth be told, conduce as strongly to good health as do
whole
clinics full of pills, needles and sweet-faced nurses.
PPs
delusion -- that’s what it is, you know -- appears to be that whatever
you want
to do these days (apart from impose outdated moral norms) is OK,
provided you
get your shots, tests and advice from them. Fie! Women deserve
infinitely
better than tacit encouragement to believe that if it feels good --
right,
timely or convenient -- they ought to go ahead; because that’s what
multitudes
are doing now, and if it were working as advertised would we really,
truly need
PP?
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