Response to Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards’ Washington Post’s Opinion Piece

The President of Planned Parenthood, the largest organization that performs abortion in the United States has come out swinging in an opinion piece on July 29th over at the Washington Post in defense of her organization after being exposed for selling aborted babies titled “These extremist videos are nothing short of an attack on women.”  Planned Parenthood various social media accounts have been promoting this piece and I think a response is in order.

Here’s my response to this piece.

1.) “Planned Parenthood has been a trusted nonprofit provider of women’s health care for nearly a century.”

Response: That near century history of Planned Parenthood isn’t as bright as she makes it out to be.  The founder Margaret Sanger was a racist eugenicist who have given talks to the Ku Klux Klan, and even in recent history whistle blowers have given an account that doesn’t paint the image of an organization with a century long trustworthy reputation.  Richards attempt to portray a sanitized PC airbrushed image of Planned Parenthood to try to cover up the heinous sin of the abortion it commits and how it treat the body parts afterwards.

2.) “Each year, 2.7 million people come to our health centers for high-quality, nonjudgmental, compassionate care.”

Response: See the response I wrote yesterday.  If pictures are worth a thousand words, I should add this meme to put it in perspective:

3.) “Since our very beginning, our health centers, providers and patients have come under outrageous attacks, political and otherwise.”

Response: Let’s say that it is true.  Does that mean that this justify their sinful business of abortion?  Two wrongs don’t make a right.

4.) “These attacks are not about us. They are about the ability of women across the country to access health care. Period.“

Response: Red-herring fallacy.  The current protest against Planned Parenthood is the result of Planned Parenthood being caught in the act of bargaining prices to sell aborted unborn babies and body parts.  It is not about women’s health care in of itself that is being “attacked.”

5.) “The most recent attacks in this decades-long campaign represent a new low.“

Response: I disagree and I will deal with her evidence of this alleged new low below.  Actually I think it’s the other way around: we see instead a new low for Planned Parenthood in how they operate.  They use the court to try to block the undercover videos from being released, merely apologize for the “tone” of the earlier videos and faked their website being “hacked.”

6.) “These extremists created a fake business, made apparently misleading corporate filings and then used false government identifications to gain access to Planned Parenthood’s medical and research staff with the agenda of secretly filming without consent —”

Response: It is called undercover investigative journalism.  But even if Cecile Richards think this is wrong, again, this does not let Planned Parenthood off the hook with what they are doing.  The worst of the two evils is with Planned Parenthood and should be what the public concentrate on between the two.

 

7.) “then heavily edited the footage to make false and absurd assertions about our standards and services.”

Response: “Heavily edited the footage?”  The unedited full footage has also been loaded up online.

8.) “They spent three years doing everything they could — not to uncover wrongdoing, but rather to create it. They failed.

Response: The incriminating parts of the videos were said by employees and agents of Planned Parenthood so one shouldn’t put much weight with Richards’ claims that these wrongdoing were fabricated.

9.) “While predictably these videos do not show anything illegal on Planned Parenthood’s part”

Response: I’m no lawyer but I wonder if purposely performing abortion in such a way that allows them to sell parts to others isn’t doing anything illegal?  I wished she explained the law cited in the videos and why what Planned Parenthood is doing and describing what they are doing in the video does not violate the plain lanaguage of the law given in the video.  If it isn’t illegal one does have to wonder why do they go to such an extent to wrangle with words as to deny they are not selling fetuses and their body parts.

10.) “medical and scientific conversations can be upsetting to hear, and I immediately apologized for the tone that was used, which did not reflect the compassion that people have come to know and expect from Planned Parenthood.”

Response: Concerning Planned Parenthood’s “compassion,” see above point number 2.  Also the problem in the videos isn’t just medical and scientific jargons that make the tone less personal, it is the troubling content of what was said and the subject of butchering and selling aborted babies.

11.) “While our opponents have been working to create scandal and panic where none exists, doctors and nurses at Planned Parenthood health centers have continued to provide care to thousands of women, men and young people every day — contraception, cancer screenings, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and safe and legal abortion.  Whose efforts are doing more to help families and make our country healthier?”

Response: Let’s say Planned Parenthood is providing all the services they say they provide and let’s say its true that their opponents are not doing as much as they are in making the country healthier.  That does not logically mean an opponent cannot point out the injustice of Planned Parenthood’s butchery.  As I have demonstrated in an earlier post, can you imagine how this kind of argument allows the Nazis to silence their opponents who speak out against the holocaust by setting up the false dilemma between them and their opponents, who do you think have services that make their country healthier?

12.) “Planned Parenthood is at the leading edge of providing the highest quality reproductive health care — including providing every new form of FDA-approved contraception and using technology to reach patients in underserved areas. That commitment has led to important health advances and helped produce the lowest rate of teen pregnancy in nearly 40 years.”

Response: See point 11.

13.) “Despite that success, some members of Congress last week made clear their ultimate goal to eliminate access to safe and legal abortion — by targeting Planned Parenthood.” In effect, they are trying to cut patients off from programs that reduce unintended pregnancies and save lives. It’s important to understand what exactly would be “defunded” by these politicians.”

Response: Fallacy of a false dilemma; it is not an either/or  choice of support Planned Parenthood or else you are against reducing unintended teen pregnancies.  Why not defund Planned Parenthood while at the same invest in other organizations that help lower teen pregnancies but don’t do what Planned Parenthood does with abortion and fetus harvesting?

14.) “The federal funding Planned Parenthood health centers receive goes toward preventive medicine — breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, well-woman exams — that millions of low- and middle-income women across the country rely on. Those are the services that would be lost.”

Response: Another fallacy of a false dilemma.  Defunding Planned Parenthood and then use that money to help “millions of low- and middle-income women” directly access “breast and cervical cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment” without Planned Parenthood as a middle man.

15.) “Some politicians claim that ending support to Planned Parenthood is related to abortion services, knowing full well that because of the Hyde amendment there has been no federal funding of abortion services except for very narrow exceptions for nearly four decades — and that low-income women have been prevented full access to abortion as a result.”

Response: Let’s not be naive.  Giving money to Planned Parenthood is supporting abortion no matter how you cut it.  Imagine a donor to ISIS who says to government auditors that his donation was to fund health services but not to fund combat services.  How will that work out for him?  On the flip side, when people boycott South Africa because of the Apartheid and when people advocate for governments and organizations to divest in Sudan because of Darfur, I don’t think people in Cecile’s camp would buy the excuse that those who continue business relations with those states are not supporting the evils committed, they just are helping the people in those states with investments and employment opportunities.

16.) “Attacking this funding is attacking women who need preventive health care, including women who need cancer screenings and contraception. Congress should not allow politics to get in the way of lifesaving care.”

Response: See point 13.

17.) “The women who come to Planned Parenthood don’t do so to make a political statement; they come to get high-quality, affordable and compassionate care.”

Response: See point 2.

18.) “When a patient comes to us, we don’t ask her if she’s a Democrat or a Republican because health-care provision should never be political.”

Response: That’s because Planned Parenthood is a business.  Money (from Patients or subsidy) is the bottom line.  This is also irrelevant to the issue at hand:  Planned Parenthood butchering babies and selling the corpse.

19.) “A fringe group in Congress tried to defund Planned Parenthood in 2011 and failed. It won’t work this time either.”

Response: That’s not necessarily what Cecile Richards thinks.  This is mere cheerleading.  Look at the time and money spent on high power crisis PR firm to counter the videos.  The danger of losing fund is real.

20.) “The American people know that we provide essential health services to millions. They know that because it’s likely that at one point in their lives they’ve gone to Planned Parenthood, or a friend or partner has.”

Response: And if they know about what’s uncovered in the videos?

21.) “One in five women has relied on Planned Parenthood for health care in her lifetime. Those women are the victims here”

Response: The victims are those Planned Parenthood murdered.

22.) “Planned Parenthood patients turn to us not just because they know we uphold the highest medical standards of care but also because we are part of their local community. ”

Response: “Highest medical standards?”  The last few years we have seen videos of Planned Parenthood employees caught going around rules and policies.

23.) “More than half of Planned Parenthood’s health centers are in rural or medically underserved areas. And for many low-income women, Planned Parenthood health centers are their sole source of medical care. Our health centers are lifelines that our country cannot afford to cut.”

Response: See point 13.  Notice how many times Richards repeat her fallacies again and again.

24.) “The extremists will not win this battle. The goal of these attacks is to get Planned Parenthood to stop providing care — and that will never happen. We have proudly provided reproductive health-care services for 99 years, and we are only getting started.”

See point 19.

25.) “Whether Congress chooses to stand with extremists or with the women of the United States is up to them.”

Response: Funny how Planned Parenthood use the term “extremists” when they were seen as such during their origin.  Loaded language to describe one’s opponent unfavorably.

26.) “Planned Parenthood will always stand with our patients and protect the rights of every woman to access care.”

Response: …at the expense of the unborn.

27.) “Today, we need the American people to stand with them too.”

Response: Today the American People need to call Planned Parenthood accountable.  Defund this organization.