During this past spring more than half of America's fifty state legislatures have ignored people's economic problems and instead become obsessed with passing legislation to defund, harass, and block the work of Planned Parenthood. In Biblical terms, what is being done to this 96 year old organization is "cursing." In scripture to curse a person or a group is to bring condemnation upon them, to put them outside the protection of God and/or the community.
When legislators and the entire anti-abortion movement which drives them engage in "cursing" they first devalue the members of the group they are attacking, characterizing them as strange people with alien values. They then make endless and groundless charges against Planned Parenthood, seeking to stop its work. This leads to the "cursed" group being shunned by other groups (barred from United Way campaigns because it is "controversial.") and the process continues until the people of the community begin to see the group as evil, a threat to families or at the very least, "not like us." This kind of cursing was done to the NAACP in the 1950s and to the ACLU in the days of McCarthyism.
You know you are dealing with cursing when a person who works at Planned Parenthood has to think about how to answer when they are asked, "Where do you work?" If they say "Planned Parenthood", will they have to defend themselves instead of enjoying a social gathering? The end result of all this cursing is that the group is placed outside the protective umbrella of social acceptance and, in effect, turned over to violence. And violence has come to Planned Parenthood for years in the form of physical harassment, arson and the murder of two of its staff.
Ask the average person why Planned Parenthood is singled out this way and they will tell you that it is because Planned Parenthood performs abortions. But abortion is not the reason.
We know it's not the reason because in the decades before 1970 when Planned Parenthood did not do abortions, when they focused instead on contraception to save women from the dangers of illegal abortion, you find the exact same cursing. Religious opponents of that time also said that Planned Parenthood was a threat to families, an alien organization, and a group that practiced murder.
At the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1934, their Social Service Commission said that no social policy was so "vicious and immoral" as contraception.
One example of the murder charge appears in a 1948 political cartoon published by a Roman Catholic journal in Massachusetts, The Catholic Mirror. In the cartoon a sleeping baby is being menaced by a hand holding a knife which it was about to plunge into the baby's chest. On the knife it said "birth control." On the arm was printed the words "Planned Parenthood." You see, without abortion in the picture, they were still portrayed as baby-killers.
It's simply the case that there are powerful religions which do not accept the right of a woman to determine her own reproductive life. In the past these churches also wanted contraception to be illegal When Margaret Sanger started to introduce birth control to American society in 1916, it was a crime to distribute contraceptive material or even information about birth control. And every major religious institution in the nation either agreed with the ban or was silent. When the anti-contraception churches lost that battle, they wanted to keep birth control as inaccessible as possible. Today they still fight to keep it from poor women. And of course, those religious groups want abortion to once again be a crime. They will not concede that a woman has the right to determine her own reproductive life.
In all those battles, Planned Parenthood was the major obstacle to getting what they want. It still is today and so they continue to curse it.
The most effective response to cursing is public support, especially by clergy and laypeople who can directly counter the religious attacks on Planned Parenthood with a religious defense of its work. It is not hard to do. Far from being an evil materialistic organization, Planned Parenthood helps the poor, the alienated, and women who have nowhere else to turn for health care. By all Biblical standards, that's not something to curse: that's something to celebrate.
Vanessa Cullins: Why Birth Control With No Co-Pay Will Help African-American Women
Cecile Richards: Birth Control You Can Afford -- It's About Time!
Sister Mary Ann Walsh: HHS Needs to Remove Itself from the Sanctuary
Planned Parenthood, whether those who curse it believe it or not, is desperately needed by people, especially for those in low income situations. Their actions and efforts are out of compassion and mercy for their fellow man and helping them deal with a sensitive, yet vital issue.
If you don't know how to read an annual report, find a colleague who can help you navigate the waters,
Do you bother to look at the number of women who die per year due to a lack of access to safe and legal abortions? Or is that "just fine" as well?
That number is not "just fine," but I prefer abstinence and better contraception education over increasing abortions.
There is no difference between the contraceptive mentality and the debt mentality- both are about enjoying today without having to pay tomorrow. But that's NOT the world God made and ordained for us to live in. We need to pay for our pleasures. And the purpose of sex is procreation, not recreation. For both men and women- EQUALLY. No special rights.
The purpose of sex is not procreation, that's some ridiculous personal belief of yours that is denied by all rational faiths and science. When women and men both have an equal chance of gestating an embryo, then we can talk about equality in reproductive matters. Currently as the species stands, women have special risks and thus special rights.
But this line is priceless, "The purpose of sex is not procreation..." lol. Someone forgot to take Biology 101.
Thank you, Rev Davis, for seeing past the scripture you have made your life's work and delving into your sense and reason on this issue. Now can we get to work on your belief in an all powerful, invisible man that controls everything and has human-like feelings about it?
Planned Parenthood does good—far more than those who would kill physicians and bomb clinics.
And PP performs only a fraction of the abortions -- which total over 1,000,000 a year in this country alone. When a fourth of all pregnacies end in abortion, something is very wrong.
If you don't like abortion, then why do Pro-life people also oppose birth control being offered in high schools? That's one of the ways to bring down the number of abortions. As is sex ed in which birth control methods are taught, again something most people in the Pro-life movement object to. I'm not looking to start a fight, I have always wondered why the Pro-life movement is so against one of the things that prevents unwanted pregnancies and the threat of an abortion as it's ending.
I have my own views on this subject. It stems from a call I ran as a paramedic. It involved the gang rape of a 12 year old little girl. I won't go into it here, unless you ask for it. Suffice it to say, it was better one life lost than two.
But abortion is not enough reason to justify the closing of all Planned Parenthood offices. The abortions are only a small part of the work they do in communities where there may be no other access to women's health care.
I applaud the contraception alternatives offered by PP. Unfortunately, however, it is difficult for me to look past the 300,000+ abortions they perform every year. They abort a medium sized American city each and every year.
As for high schools being in the busines of selling condoms, I think that sends the wrong message to kids. The right message is that sex is an intimate act between committed adults in love, not something between children that is facilitated at the school snack bar. Condoms are readily available in grocery stores for kids who will have sex anyway. I very much doubt we will lower the incidence of unwanted pregnancies by selling them in the high school snack bar too.
The rape you mentioned is of course a horrifying event. Two thoughts on that. First, the overall coarsening of society undoubtedly contributes to such things. I personally think that casual sex and rampant abortion is an aspect of that coarsening. Second, most of the million+ abortions perfomed each year in this country are not for gang-raped 12 year olds. (Those that are, could be performed in a hospital setting and not in a PP abortion mill.)
Most abortions are instead simply the woman's chosen method of birth control. Choices are great, but I draw the line at a woman choosing abortion as her method of birth control.
And it doesn't even have the integrity to be honest about its business model - it is an abortion mill with slick packaging so that it attract gibmint handouts. The profit incentive incentivizes the staff to promote abortion to mostly confused women of limited means.
And this empty-headed man of the cloth gives them moral cover.
Planned Parenthood doesn't cure anyone, no one is taking anyone out of the care of God.
Only a tiny fraction of them will be referred to an adoption agency. Most will be told they should have an abortion, with that being a likely end. For this, the government is expected to pay them cash for providing a community service? Roe vs. Wade established that people have a right to have an abortion, not that one must be provided (or funded) by the government. Without that steady stream of government dollars keeping their doors open for "pregnancy counseling," the cost of an abortion at PP would skyrocket, even though they segregate funding. Money, being fungible, does not directly pay for abortion: it merely provides the facility, keeps the lights on, pays the receptionist, and the costs of having the doctor and nurse come in. The tiny portion of the cost actually dedicated directly to the abortion procedure is the only part paid by the "customer," but the whole process would be far more costly if the facilities were not subsidized.
For moving to end this taxpayer-subsidized abortion, you suggest that legislatures are wickedly cursing PP and that we should applaud PP? If so, I suppose you would have no objection to PP relocating to the basement of your church and performing procedures there once they can no longer afford their current facilities?
Probably no more or less than he would want open heart surgery performed in his church.
And many of us do volunteer at crisis pregnancy centers who offer real options (like adoption) and who don't lie (denying PAS, the risk of breast cancer, the health risks from blind abortions like a perferated uterus b/c the clinics don't use ultrasounds, the underreporting of rape). Also, over half (HALF!) of abortions occur as birth control (b/c contraception failed; the source for this is Alan Guttmacher, pro-choice affiliate of PP).
The pro-choice mantra has been "My choice my body" and "Don't impose your morality upon me." I guess this goes only one way, b/c these folks want to impose their morals upon me by making me pay for their abortions. No, thanks.