The Patriot Post® · Planned Parenthood Ousts Insufficiently 'Woke' CEO

Just eight months into her tenure, Leana Wen was fired as Planned Parenthood’s president Tuesday. She succeeded Cecile Richards last November, but Wen, a woman of color and a committed leftist, wasn’t radical enough for the nation’s largest abortion mill. Given that Planned Parenthood rakes in more than $500 million every year from American taxpayers, many of whom view abortion as a tragedy to be ended, this is significant news.

The specifics are even more galling. Wen last year insisted, “People aren’t coming to Planned Parenthood to make a political statement. They’re coming because they need their vaccinations. They need their well-woman exams. They’re getting HIV tests.” (Definitely not mammograms, though.) She also said in her departure statement, “I believe the best way to protect abortion care is to be clear that it is not a political issue but a health care one.”

Planned Parenthood’s board members, however, clearly view abortion as their mission (PP averages 320,000 abortions each year), and Wen was not sufficiently on message. (That mission was always clear to most Americans, but the board explicitly declared it by removing Wen.) Board members also see abortion as primarily a political issue and wanted a social-justice warrior, not a physician like Wen, to lead the charge, especially when so many states are directly challenging Roe v. Wade with restrictions on abortion and the Trump administration implemented a new rule cutting $60 million in funding from Planned Parenthood.

In a sense, the board is right. The Hippocratic Oath historically taken by physicians says, “I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm.” (The phrase “first, to do no harm,” is a later development along the same lines.) An abortion by definition harms (i.e., terminates the life of) a preborn human. Ergo, abortion is arguably better understood as a political and cultural issue.

Furthermore, there was the whole issue of Wen not submitting to the transgender movement’s increasing power. She reportedly refused to use “trans-inclusive” language and would not agree that men can have babies. Apparently, in today’s “woke” radical-leftist climate, Planned Parenthood couldn’t be effectively led by someone who believes in that science.

Wen will be replaced temporarily by board member Alexis McGill Johnson during the search for a permanent replacement. Of course, no leader of this massive taxpayer-funded abortion mill is going to be palatable to those who value the sanctity of life, and as long as Planned Parenthood is violating the very right to life given each human by his or her Creator, there will continue to be a political and cultural fight.