Editor’s Note: This article was first published by Alliance Defending Freedom on March 20, 2013 and is reprinted with permission.
Planned Parenthood has been caught RED-HANDED denying millions of women access to contraception, refusing them permission to use birth control, and controlling their reproductive choices.
What? You thought Planned Parenthood GAVE AWAY, rather than denied access to, abortion pills and birth control? You must not have heard Planned Parenthood’s new definition of “denying access.”
Planned Parenthood rakes in over a billion dollars every year. It charges money for contraception—big money—pocketing hundreds of millions in contraception cash from women and taxpayers.
But Planned Parenthood blasts PEOPLE OF FAITH WHO oppose ObamaCare’s ABORTION PILL MANDATE. Those families have done nothing but ask courts for freedom from ObamaCare’s coercive mandate which forces them to pay for other people’s abortion-pills, sterilizations and birth control in violation of their religious beliefs. These people of faith do not want to be in the business of handing out free abortion pills and birth control.
Planned Parenthood’s recent Facebook ad insists that for that reason alone, these religious families are not EXERCISING THEIR FAITH BELIEFS, but rather are acting to “block” women’s “access to birth control coverage,” refusing to give women “permission to use birth control,” and “control[ling] the health care choices” of women.
All because religious families are asking that they not BE MANDATED to pay for these ABORTION-INDUCING DRUGS so that women will get such drugs from them for free.
But Planned Parenthood doesn’t hand out birth control or abortion inducing drugs for free either. Planned Parenthood ALWAYS COLLECTS COLD, HARD CASH from their CLIENTS and AMERICAN TAXPAYERS for the birth control it doles out. Planned Parenthood’s websites show that it charges between $15 and $800 for hormonal birth control, up to $70 for early-abortion pills, and up to $1000 for IUDs. At the very minimum, it charged low-income women $90 million for contraceptives in fiscal year 2011, and collected more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer money in that same year.
Since Planned Parenthood is not giving every woman (OR EVEN ANY WOMAN) abortion pills and birth control for free because its concern is its BOTTOM LINE, then by its own standard it is no better than religious families who, FOR CONSTITUTIONALLY-PROTECTED RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REASONS, also don’t want to provide these items for free. Yes, Planned Parenthood is blocking women’s access to birth control.
But wait. You might say that Planned Parenthood isn’t actually making birth control illegal, isn’t penalizing women for using it, isn’t directly telling women not to use it. After all, women don’t need Planned Parenthood’s permission to use birth control, just like they don’t need their boss’s permission. But none of that matters to Planned Parenthood: religious families aren’t doing any of this either. PEOPLE OF FAITH just want to be free from ObamaCare forcing them to buy ABORTION PILLS for women.
Yet according to Planned Parenthood, anyone who refuses to give women free abortion pills and contraception is “blocking access” to birth control. So, in fact, that makes Planned Parenthood the NUMBER ONE ENEMY OF ACCESS to women’s birth control. They charge women and taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars for it every year.
Planned Parenthood, stop holding my health hostage! Planned Parenthood needs to put a stop to this attack on women’s health by asking Congress to rid our country of Planned Parenthood.
