The Patriot Post® · Planned Parenthood Gets Bad Sell Reception
Partner with Planned Parenthood, and you’ll pay for it. That seemed to be the message [Tuesday] from the U.S. House upon learning that the country’s largest abortion business was running its own little shop of horrors. Hours after the Center for Medical Progress exposed the group’s ghoulish side business of selling human body parts, the effects of the scandal started hitting home for organizations like Susan G. Komen — longtime donors to Cecile Richards’s group.
What should have been a routine vote on a commemorative breast cancer coin became anything but, once members were alerted by FRC and Heritage Action that the bill included funding for Komen — which is a major supporter of the “nonprofit” caught peddling baby parts. That association was too toxic for House conservatives, who refused to turn over $4,750,000 to one of Planned Parenthood’s biggest donors on the same day it was implicated in a Frankenstein-like plot. Komen had tried to cut ties with Richards’s group in 2012 and fund organizations actually performing mammograms, but ultimately caved to left-wing pressure.
Now, that relationship isn’t just costing them one coin — but several. In the wake of CMP’s video, members streamed onto the House floor to pull their names from the bill [Tuesday] — 25 in all. House leadership followed, temporarily shelving the bill until Komen could be removed and calling for an investigation into the taxpayer-funded harvesters. In a statement released [Wednesday] by Speaker John Boehner, the GOP vowed to call Planned Parenthood on the carpet — not only for selling baby parts, but for potentially violating the partial-birth abortion ban (a procedure preferred by Dr. Deborah Nucatola because it’s less likely to damage “the goods” — unless those goods are women).
These accusations demand a response, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said, and Congress intends to give it one. “When an organization monetizes an unborn child — and with the cavalier attitude portrayed in this horrific video — we must all act,” Boehner resolved. “As a start, I have asked our relevant committees to look into this matter. I am also calling on President Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell to denounce, and stop, these gruesome practices.”
And the House’s investigation isn’t the only one. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal ® was one of the many GOP candidates lashing out at the government’s investment in a group that mutilates babies for merchandise. “This same organization is seeking to open an abortion clinic in New Orleans. I have instructed Louisiana’s Department of Health and Hospitals to conduct an immediate investigation into this alleged evil and illegal activity and to not issue any licenses until this investigation is complete. I am also asking the FBI to assist DHS in investigating…” Nearby Texas will do the same.
The drumbeat continued on the campaign trail, where almost every Republican presidential candidate had harsh words for the group that President Obama has spoken to, worked with, and fundraised for. Despite different statements, they shared a common theme: it’s time to defund Planned Parenthood.
Meanwhile, at the PR bunker of Cecile Richards’s group, crisis management was in full swing. In a feeble attempt to explain the video, a spokesman insisted that “tissue donation” was routine. Tissue donation, maybe. Tissue sales? Never. “Anti-abortion activists … have made false charges for years,” Planned Parenthood claims. Now, they’re “making claims with no basis in reality and no evidence to back them up.” What do you call a two-hour, 42-minute video with one of the highest executives at Planned Parenthood if not “evidence?” Unfortunately, this is what liberals do. They somehow get away with accusing conservatives of saying or doing vile things without proof. Yet when pro-lifers produce powerful evidence of Planned Parenthood’s wrongdoing, they deny it. Richards’s group also tried to discredit the tape as “heavily edited.” But that will be difficult to do now that CMP has released the full recording and transcript.
Of course, these image problems are made more difficult by Planned Parenthood’s long track record of sexual abuse cover-ups, gender targeting, unsanitary clinic conditions, botched abortions, falsified medical information, Medicare fraud, and more. At this point, most Americans probably assume that if Planned Parenthood had so little respect for the living, why would it respect the dead?
For now, all eyes are on the Democratic Party, which has enormously benefited from the political alliance with Richards’s group. Will it give back the tainted money? Or will it leave voters wondering: exactly how much of the $586,095 given to House and Senate Democrats in 2014 came from the sale of baby remains?
The Dues and Don'ts of NEA Activism
Was it a meeting of the National Education Association or the Democratic National Committee? At times it was difficult to tell. The annual gathering of America’s largest teachers union featured everything from a lesbian proposal at the podium to openly celebrating the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, the NEA’s academic façade continues to crumble.
A long-time political arm of the Left, the NEA has crossed into new territory now, after years of openly cheering abortion politics and radical sex ed. Over the Fourth of July meeting at its yearly convention, the organization supposedly committed to “advancing the cause of public education,” advanced another cause: the destruction of religious liberty. In a move that should raise the eyebrows of members and parents everywhere, the NEA announced — and passed — a new resolution committing the group to a full-out assault on the states’ Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs). Like most of the NEA’s priorities, this has nothing to do with education and everything to do with expelling God from society.
“The NEA will develop educational materials for its state affiliates and members about the potential dangers of so-called ‘Religious Freedom Restoration Acts’ (RFRAs), which may license individuals and corporations to discriminate on the theory that their religious beliefs require such actions,” the language states. “The materials will describe the current legal landscape at the federal and state level, provide model state legislative amendments to modify existing laws to prevent such discriminatory applications, provide talking points for advocacy, and link to existing resources for members and state affiliates to use in efforts to prevent the use of such laws as a license to discriminate.” By voice vote, the measure passed, officially making RFRAs the target of the wealthiest teachers’ group in the nation.
How does this possibly concern teachers, you wonder? It doesn’t. And while some educators are “compelled” to join the NEA, they aren’t compelled to sit by silently while the union uses its own dues to attack them. It’s time for members to stand up and be counted in an organization of bullies that perpetually attacks its own body’s beliefs. In the meantime, let this be a warning to parents. If the NEA is active in your state, religious freedom isn’t the only thing under assault — so is life, morality, and Bible-based sexuality. Do your part! Start a movement to remove the NEA and its affiliates from your state!
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.