Abby Johnson’s page on Facebook, Abby Johnson: Pro-life advocate, is currently informing those who like her page about Planned Parenthood Action‘s new cover photo. This is one of the first parts of the page that anyone – even among those who do not have a Facebook – sees who goes to check out the page of the abortion organization’s political arm.
Abby Johnson not only is informing pro-lifers on Facebook about this new cover photo, but has some choice words about it:
Here’s Planned Parenthood’s new cover photo. Another example of the degradation of women. Of course, we are not smart enough to think of anything besides birth control! Forget foreign policy, taxes, the economy, or Israel! If it isn’t birth control, we shouldn’t even think about it.
Abby Johnson makes a good point about this new cover photo. It certainly is degrading to women, and it is ironically coming from an organization who claims to be about supporting and protecting “women’s health!” It is inappropriate for the V to be represented by a women’s legs spread wide open. The O and T are represented by forms of birth control; only the E is a normal letter, with an American flag pattern. As a woman, it is offensive to me that Planned Parenthood thinks that I want my vote to be described by a woman spreading her legs open and forms of birth control.
I am a woman, and I don’t agree with Planned Parenthood. I don’t need to have free birth control and access to abortion in order to feel empowered. It is not empowering for a woman to have others pay for her birth control, or to end the life of her own child through an abortion. If one is to truly a pro-woman, one understands the importance of being pro-life. Planned Parenthood claims to speak up for women and women’s health, but by offering abortions, even for reasons of sex-selection, the organization disregards young women still in the womb and denies them health care. Women’s health care is also much more comprehensive than access to abortion, especially since abortion isn’t even health care.
I too want to make the election about birth control and abortion, but from a completely different standpoint from Planned Parenthood’s. I am a woman who wants to ensure that those who are morally or religiously opposed to birth control do not have to pay for others to use it, and that abortion, as a procedure deadly for unborn babies and damaging to women, is not promoted or accepted any further, but rather limited and restricted.
Now, I am a woman who is against Planned Parenthood’s stance on birth control and abortion. So it makes sense that I would be offended. However, there are women who are offended for other reasons, for the reasons Abby Johnson mentions. To again quote her, “Of course, we are not smart enough to think of anything besides birth control! Forget foreign policy, taxes, the economy, or Israel! If it isn’t birth control, we shouldn’t even think about it.” Even women who may agree with Planned Parenthood’s stance in part or whole are offended by such a focus, to the point of being an obsession, on sex and birth control. There are other issues at stake in this election, for men and women alike, and yet Planned Parenthood seems to forget such issues completely. Women are thus to be defined only by their use for sex and birth control.
It should be shocking how an organization that claims to be about women’s health really degrades and offends women with such a cover photo. Sadly, though, it is not so surprising that an organization obsessed with birth control, sex, and abortion is trying to make the election about such. This cover photo is only further evidence of how mixed up Planned Parenthood really is.