So, you’ve just got done blowing up the Death Star; what’s your next career move? Well, if your name is Billy Dee Williams, the answer’s simple: sell malt liquor.
After playing Lando Calrissian in two Star Wars movies, Williams appeared in a series of ads for Colt 45 brand malt liquor. The actor would speak about “the power of Colt 45” and an attractive woman often materialized as soon as he cracked open a can. Curiously, I’ve been unable to duplicate this effect.
Williams’ dialog included the line, “I don’t claim you can have a better time with Colt 45 than without it, but why take chances?” Now, my purpose here isn’t to endorse Colt 45 (was always an OE man, myself), but I do think that the question, “Why takes chances?” has relevance to the abortion debate, particularly when it comes to funding Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood is America’s largest abortion chain, performing over three hundred thousand of them every year. Those done in the second trimester use a technique known as Dilation & Evacuation (D&E), and it involves pulling a fetus apart one piece at a time. Planned Parenthood’s Director of Medical Services, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, was caught on tape explaining how she can perform a D&E and still harvest the child’s organs:
We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.
Dr. Nucatola will “crush” fetuses at up to the 24th week; evidence suggests they feel pain by the 20th.
But even if the idea of dismembering babies doesn’t bother you (“baby” is the term that Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde used for a fetus she aborted), there’s still plenty of other things that might.
For example, you might not appreciate Planned Parenthood’s racist history and the way it targets minority neighborhoods. If that’s the case, then you probably wouldn’t like how Planned Parenthood of Idaho’s Director of Development, Autumn Kersey, was happy to take money from someone who wanted “a black baby” to get aborted because he felt that “the less black kids out there the better.” Kersey said the man’s feelings were “understandable” and was “excited” about getting a donation from him. Other Planned Parenthood officials have been just as willing.
Or maybe marking girls for extermination just doesn’t sit right with you. There’s a strong preference for male children among some cultures, and that’s made sex-selective abortions popular. The phenomenon exists in North America, with the Canadian Medical Association Journal reporting that Canada has become “a haven” for those seeking to abort their daughters. Planned Parenthood is another haven: at Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger clinic in New York City, staff were ready to assist a woman who said she would have an abortion if her baby turned out to be a girl. That reaction wasn’t unique, as visits to different Planned Parenthood facilities yielded similar results.
Of course, the threat to girls isn’t just when they’re in the womb; Planned Parenthood gives a hand to the men who prey on them later, too. Timothy Smith understood this, which is why he took his 13-year-old daughter there after getting her pregnant. In a subsequent lawsuit, a Planned Parenthood employee stated that “being thirteen and pregnant alone is not a red flag.”
Smith wasn’t the only predator to be helped, as John Blanks, Jr., Adam Gault, Joseph Coles, Kevon Walker, Edgar Ramirez, John Szorady, Gary Cross, Grey David Woods, and others were able to stay out of jail and keep harming their victims thanks to cover-up abortions at Planned Parenthood.
Despite all this, the organization still receives over half a billion tax dollars annually. If you’d rather not wonder whether your money is helping racists, misogynists, and child sex predators, then there’s a much less risky place it can go.
Across the country, Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) furnish care to people in need. They also do a better job than Planned Parenthood does: whereas FQHCs provided women with more than five hundred thousand mammograms last year, Planned Parenthood offered none. Meanwhile, they don’t abort baby girls or destroy evidence of rape.
If you think that sounds like a better option, then tell Congress you want Planned Parenthood’s funding redirected to FQHC’s instead. Because after all, why take chances?
