Oh dear, Planned Parenthood’s getting laughable again. Tell me, can an organization be defunded on the grounds that they’re a national embarrassment? It seems an idea worth exploring, given that the Abortion Giant is currently making another pathetic attempt to crush the Crisis Pregnancy Centers, while continuing their awkward rhetoric of ‘choice’. “Women have the right to choose!” they scream, loud and piercing, “as long as they can only choose us!”
Seriously, I can hardly decide whether to be annoyed, or simply pity P.P. for their utter inability to promote themselves as being in any way good for our country.
What, exactly, is their recent attempt at asserting sole victory over a woman’s uterus? They claim that:
“87% of “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” investigated in a 2006 Congressional investigation were found to provide false or misleading medical information. Planned Parenthood remains a top resource for truthful and comprehensive information about pregnancy and sexual health as well as confidential care.”
Brilliant. Really, stellar. The only problem being the question, “What, exactly, were these Crisis Pregnancy Centers being misleading about?”
From Planned Parenthood’s giddiness, I would assume that women were being told that babies weren’t expensive, or that if you have an abortion, you’ll lose your ability to read. But no, the 2006 study they cite claims that:
“In total, 87% of the centers reached (20 of 23 centers) provided false or misleading information to the callers. The three major areas of misinformation involved (1) the purported relationship between abortion and breast cancer; (2) the purported relationship between abortion and infertility; and (3) the purported relationship between abortion and mental illness.”
To which I can’t help but laugh. Because the three pre-requisites for ‘being misleading to women’ are simply things that Planned Parenthood disagrees with. This, by the way, does nothing to disprove the growing suspicion that the pro-choice movement is devolving entirely into a snobbish elitism, an aristocracy of people whose views “are the right views! So whoever disagrees with our views is being intentionally misleading!”
Right. Not pretentious at all. Now Planned Parenthood’s disbelief in these three relationships – abortion/breast cancer, abortion/infertility, abortion/mental health – is idiotic at best. But even if each were false, one would hardly argue that there isn’t reasonable, educated debate over them. And given that there exists this educated debate, the Crisis Pregnancy Centers can hardly be lambasted as ‘being misleading’ for taking one side of the debate, any more than Planned Parenthood could for taking the other.
The link between abortion and breast cancer has been – by every standard one can prove it by – proven. It’s right here, in the prestigious medical journal “Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention.” What more does Planned Parenthood need? Does one of the publishing doctors have to be the National Cancer Institute’s chief of the Environmental Epidemiology Branch, and to have previously believed there was no link between abortion and breast cancer, and through the excruciatingly scientific following of evidence arrive at a medical conclusion that opposed her previous views? Oh wait.
I don’t mind the denial – Planned Parenthood lives in denial – it’s just when denial is coated by such a layer of snobbishness that it is mistaken for medical opinion and then used to attack charities that I bristle. No, the facts are in. Abortion increases the risk of breast cancer.
And it increases the risk of infertility. Again, not to be lame and scientific and quote boring medical journals (Who believes in science anyways? Truth is determined by good catchphrases!) but abortion has been proven to lead to endometriosis in S.T.D patients. And it is worth noting that most statements that propose abortion as containing no risk of infertility are followed by the qualifier ‘unless there are multiple abortions, or foetal tissue remains left in the uterus’. So abortion doesn’t cause infertility, unless it causes infertility.
And it harms women’s mental health. Somehow I doubt Rachel’s Vineyard is recruiting the thousands upon thousands of women who come to its retreats, seeking healing.
But the point isn’t that Planned Parenthood should agree with medical journals. Of course they should. The point is that the very fact that the medical journals exist, as one of the highest authorities of medical agreement today, makes it absolutely ridiculous to claim that anyone believing these journals and disseminating the information in them is thereby misleading women. Not that Planned Parenthood cares. As I mentioned before, the pro-choice movement seems to be far beyond caring what the average human being thinks of them, so entrenched are they in bitter aristocracy.
The irony of this whole situation shouldn’t be left out. You see, when Congress – with all the power of the powers-that-be -investigated pro-life Pregnancy Centers, the best evidence they can find to malign them is that they are in the habit of believing the most prestigious, scholarly medical journals around. When Live Action – a.k.a, a couple of folks with a camera – investigate Planned Parenthood, they find the blatant violation of mandatory reporting laws for statutory rape that protect children.
At some point it can no longer be a surprise that the majority of Americans are pro-life.
