It’s been a rough year for Planned Parenthood. Fatal management decisions and PR blunders have spotlighted their true colors, and they aren’t pretty. This isn’t the “abortion is just 3% of services” argument anymore. Planned Parenthood wants to sell abortions, plain and simple. And my generation is very interested.
The unraveling started when the pro-life film “Unplanned” opened in February to resounding box office success. “Unplanned” tells the story of Abby Johnson, who left her position as a Planned Parenthood clinic director after witnessing the abortion of an unborn child at 13 weeks.
Filmed on a budget of just $6 million, the film grossed $18 million nationally and is currently the No. 1 pre-selling film on Amazon. As “Unplanned” packed theaters across the country, more than a dozen states passed new pro-life legislation, preparing for a much-anticipated SCOTUS challenge to Roe v. Wade.
Feeling the heat, Planned Parenthood fired its CEO, Dr. Leana Wen, after less than a year in leadership. Wen wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times that her focus was to “treat the whole patient,” prioritizing a full spectrum of health services, including prenatal and postnatal care and mental health. She envisioned emphasizing health care, with abortion as just one component. Planned Parenthood disagreed. She was ousted after a secret board meeting in which her holistic care goals were dismissed as “mission creep.”
Then in August, Planned Parenthood lost a $3 million wrongful termination lawsuit to a former clinic director and whistleblower. Mayra Rodriguez, a 17-year-veteran and former employee of the year, reported practices that endangered the health and safety of patients, including the failure to report sexual abuse of a young girl to law enforcement. So Planned Parenthood fired her — and then tried to undermine her case on the basis of her status as an undocumented immigrant. If you’re keeping track, apparently sexual abuse victims, employees, immigrants and, oh yes, patients, are all disposable.
More recently, Planned Parenthood passed on $60 million in federal funding after the Trump Administration enforced a new rule prohibiting Title X providers from referring for abortion as a method of family planning. Planned Parenthood decried the move on Twitter as “absolutely devastating,” that they had been forced out by a “gag rule.”
The truth is, Planned Parenthood forced itself out. They provide abortions and they are willing to lose funding, patients, and services rather than stop referring directly for abortion, even in its family-planning clinics. Two Ohio clinics have already shut down due to Planned Parenthood’s departure from the program.
Now, in September, the oldest active abortionist in the U.S. testified last week in San Francisco federal court that Planned Parenthood delivered live babies to harvest their organs, cutting out hearts that were still beating, and delivering the bodies to Stanford and other research labs.
Planned Parenthood’s lawyers argue that David Daleiden, the Center for Medical Progress director, deceptively edited videos to show the baby body-parts trafficking. But the easiest way to avoid being caught selling baby body parts is to not say “Yes, we sell baby body parts.” If you say you do, and show you do on video, then maybe the truth is, you actually do it.
So, to recap, Planned Parenthood has lost $60 million, a CEO, two clinics, a $3 million lawsuit, and credibility on issues like organ trafficking and health care. What’s an organization to do?
Apparently, sell tickets. Planned Parenthood announced a list of musical artists supporting abortion and calling for “bans off my body.” They’re hoping to retake some ground by appealing to popularity and star power, because if there’s one thing young people respond to, it’s Miley Cyrus telling them to fight for abortion.
Planned Parenthood is truly clueless to just how out of touch they are with America. Seven in 10 millennials support restricting or ending abortion, and just 7% of millennials want abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy and paid for by taxes. Abortions are at a historic low, the lowest since 1973. Young adults are looking for holistic solutions and community support, not tired slogans of their grandmother’s feminism.
Millennials and Generation Z deeply distrust institutions, are passionate about social justice and health care, and just aren’t excited about abortion. This year, Planned Parenthood showed just how far they will go to promote abortions, and their theatrics have been met by a big yawn from the generation they hope will finance them for years to come.
