In a recent fundraising email, Cecile Richards recently made a statement that, taken at face value, should be agreeable to all. But the statement was controversial for one reason: Planned Parenthood doesn’t actually believe or practice what Richards claimed.
Part of Richards’ statement — which was in response to President Trump’s decision on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) — reads, “Here at Planned Parenthood, we firmly believe that every person has the right to live.” Richards’ email also mentioned how she felt “infuriated” and “heartbroken.” She called the president’s decision “cruel and heartless.”
But these sentiments about human persons make little sense coming from the CEO and president of the organization that commits more abortions than any other single entity in the country. Science has confirmed that life begins at fertilization and that preborn children grow and develop as the unique human beings they are in the womb. This growth is quite rapid in the first trimester — and stunningly beautiful throughout.
But while Richards claims Planned Parenthood has concern for children, preborn children are not viewed by Planned Parenthood in the same way as born children: with “the right to live.” After all, Planned Parenthood doesn’t commit more abortions than any other organization by accident. Planned Parenthood has abortion quotas, as confirmed by multiple former employees. Planned Parenthood also opposes virtually every regulation and/or restriction on abortion — including ones supported by majorities of Americans, across various demographics and a variety of opinions on abortion.
For years, Live Action has documented the abuses wrought by Planned Parenthood’s devotion to abortion. This includes misleading and lying to women about fetal development so as to push them into abortions as well as offering to help sex traffickers rather than their child victims (revealing yet another way Planned Parenthood is not so pro-child after all.)
Former Planned Parenthood clients have also come forward to share how they were coerced into abortions or even forced into the procedure against their will. While the abortion giant may mislead donors with rhetoric about women’s “choice,” the reports of coercion and pressure to abort show that the organization is really about abortion.
Planned Parenthood and its supporters continue to mislead clients as well as the American people at large. Live Action has documented examples of this, including how, for years, Planned Parenthood led the public to believe it provides mammograms, which is not patently false. In September 2015, CEO Cecile Richards finally admitted before Congress that her organization does not provide mammograms, but also claimed that Planned Parenthood never led anyone to believe otherwise.
Planned Parenthood claims that abortions make up only three percent of its services, but with a market share of about 35 percent of abortions in the nation, this is unbelievable (even the Washington Post and Slate have documented how false the three percent claim is). And while Planned Parenthood likes to tout its lifesaving cancer screenings whenever its taxpayer funding is at risk, it actually provides a mere 1.8 percent of the nation’s clinical breast cancer exams (remember, these aren’t mammograms) and 0.97 percent of the nation’s Pap smears (cervical cancer screenings).
The numbers from Planned Parenthood’s 2015-2016 annual report show an increase in abortions committed, along with a continuing long-term decrease in its other offerings. When debate began on the healthcare legislation to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), President Donald Trump — who has said he would sign legislation to defund the abortion giant — offered Planned Parenthood the chance to retain its federal funding if it ceased performing abortions. Richards refused.
Planned Parenthood also put out an awkwardly-worded press release, claiming Trump’s decision on DACA would “rip millions of families apart.” When you consider that Planned Parenthood abortionists literally rip children apart, and suction them from their mother’s wombs, again, one has to wonder: is Planned Parenthood blind to its own actions?
Planned Parenthood employees have also been documented discussing their use of the illegal partial-birth abortion procedure, from some of the first to the most recent investigative releases from the Center for Medical Progress, which also allege Planned Parenthood benefits from the sale of aborted baby body parts.
This isn’t the first time that Richards and her organization have been oblivious to their own rhetoric about human life. Earlier this year Richards tweeted, “Everyone deserves the right to live…” in reference to “gun violence.” That tweet received incredulous reactions from the public on social media. Whatever the issue, it’s nonsensical for the leader of the nation’s largest abortion giant to espouse the right to life for human beings when that same organization is busy killing 900 humans a day, on average.
