The Patriot Post® · Companies Love Misery
It’s not just your tax dollars that are supporting Planned Parenthood – proceeds from your coffee and shampoo may be too! As 2nd Vote points out, the abortion giant isn’t exactly hurting for cash – not when you consider the 40 companies giving directly to Cecile Richards’s group. Add that to the millions Planned Parenthood banks from abortion (and potentially, abortion’s victims) and the organization should be able to manage just fine without the government’s support. If liberals want to continue lining Planned Parenthood’s pockets after the allegations that they traffic in baby body parts, let them do it with their own money! But it’s time for corporations and Congress to cut ties.
Taxpayers already fork over billions of dollars to Planned Parenthood unwillingly. How much more will you give willingly by doing business with its corporate partners? Some of these companies may be in the process of severing those relationships. If so, you can give them a helpful push. Send them a note and ask them to discontinue their donations to an organization under criminal investigation for violating – not just the law, but basic decency.
While Democrats here in Washington are calling for the Justice Department to investigate the organization that exposed Planned Parenthood, several states are focused on the real wrongdoing. Kansas kicked off an investigation yesterday, becoming the eighth state to put Planned Parenthood under the local microscope. Minnesota may not be far behind, now that 65 lawmakers are demanding answers. In Virginia, Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) refuses to investigate. (And there are two million reasons why in his 2013 campaign bank account.) Like the others defending Planned Parenthood, McAuliffe is proving that he’s governed by political contributions – not the law.
Some on the Left say they don’t want to give the story “more oxygen,” an unfortunate analogy for a story that involves the crushing of babies’ thoraxes. And while Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) did admit the videos “raise questions,” our biggest one continues to be: what are you going to do about them? Fortunately, we don’t have to ask that of the pro-life members of Congress, who are racing to turn off the funding spigots for Richards’s group.
Earlier this afternoon, Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) heard the 26,000 of you who signed our petition and introduced a bill to put a moratorium on Planned Parenthood funding until the group proves it isn’t performing abortion or providing money to others that do. “These videos give us a window into the soul of the big abortion industry,” Rep. Black said. And it isn’t something the United States government should be a party to.
Meanwhile, at the intersection of highway bill and Planned Parenthood, conservative Senators are also working to put the brakes on Planned Parenthood’s money until we know the full extent of their criminal activity. It’s just one of many ideas floating through the Republican conferences to protect taxpayers – and, more importantly, potential victims. As far as House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is concerned, nothing is off the table if it means holding the President’s closest ally accountable. Until then, his chamber will continue to speak on behalf of the millions of unborn children defiled behind the closed doors of Planned Parenthood.
In a special order, 23 members streamed onto the House floor last night – some of them for the first time – to express their horror at these latest revelations. Washington’s Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler ®, like so many of her colleagues, talked poignantly about the crisis of conscience in our country. “I’ve never taken to the floor of this House to express outrage over this issue,” she said. “But today I do, and it’s time for answers.”
Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wisc.), whose governor just signed a 20-week abortion ban into law, pointed out the hypocrisy of the abortion industry. “For 30 years, Planned Parenthood has worked to dehumanize the babies that they have aborted – claiming that these little babies were just clumps of cells, just clumps of tissue. But through the recent videos that have come out, they have in essence admitted what we’ve known all along: that these are actually little humans! These are little babies! …These [are the same] babies that feel pain in the abortion.”
In one of the more moving speeches Tuesday evening, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) explained that he was saddened by the revelations of Planned Parenthood – but not surprised. “They have so repeatedly proven themselves blind to the dignity of humanity. They’ve always been at the forefront of the greatest human genocide in human history.” But, he said with new hope, “The winds of change are starting to blow.” And with your help, they’ll continue to. Contact your Congressman and ask them to defund Planned Parenthood!
Plan B No Substitute for Plan A: Abstinence!
There’s a reason Congress just agreed to fund more abstinence education – the alternative isn’t working! In a new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), teenagers got mixed reviews for their sexual activity. On one hand, the number of 15 to 19-year olds having intercourse has dropped, as much as 14% for girls and 22% for boys over the past 25 years.
As positive as that is, the results are complicated by a slight uptick in sexual activity from 2011-2013 – the first years of President Obama’s radical new sex education experiment. The modest slice of federal abstinence funding that had been available to programs under President Bush was zeroed out by the Obama administration and replaced with a curriculum of sexual liberalism.
For abstinence groups like Valerie Huber’s NAEA, that’s a frustrating piece of data because it symbolizes positive gains that could have been. “It is troubling that progress stalled at the very time that federal sex education policy moved away from an emphasis on sexual risk avoidance. New policy directives that began under the Obama administration in 2010 were accompanied by hundreds of millions taxpayer dollars to… an approach that supports pregnancy-prevention only as the chief measure of success.”
As a result, the CDC’s latest statistics show, America is experiencing a near-pandemic of sexually transmitted disease – for the younger generations especially. With more than 20 million new cases of STDs cropping up every year, America’s biggest health crisis may be the one nobody’s talking about. Part of the problem is the Left’s emphasis on “contraception” like the morning-after pill. These drugs may prevent a pregnancy, but they’ll never prevent an STD.
Today, more than one in five sexually active teen girls are using these pills, wrongly believing Plan B will protect them. It won’t. Nothing in these drugs can retroactively guard against sexually transmitted disease. As Huber points out, we’re hopeful that Congress is moving toward new “funding parameters that could very well jumpstart a renewed decline in teen sex.” But it’s even more important for us, as parents, to realize that we’re are the first line of defense for our children. Moms and dads who are having on-going conversations about healthy, God-centered relationships with their kids is the best preventative!
Vets Gunning for Pentagon’s Policy
If the Obama administration won’t protect military recruiters, Americans will. In a flood of support for the four Marines and sailor killed in the Chattanooga shooting, veterans and other Americans are showing up at recruiting stations all around the country to stand guard over those who’ve stood guard for us. Armed citizens – many of them military veterans – are outraged that the same troops fighting to defend the Second Amendment can’t exercise it themselves.
“We are here to serve and protect,” said Clint Janney, who, like many is angry at the gun-free zones for military personnel. “What the government won’t do, we will.” Impromptu guard forces like Janney’s are cropping up everywhere – as much a symbol of defiance as defense. Some men sit in lawn chairs outside the centers, others stand by the door, but their posture is the same: alert. “They’re sitting ducks,” Stewart Rhodes said of the unarmed Marines. “They’d be better off if they were walking down the streets of Baghdad.” In Madison, veterans have said their presence is a sign of civic pride. “It’s good to show that people can still come together,” they wanted the New York Daily News to know.
Meanwhile, most Americans are still waiting for some of that patriotism to rub off on the commander-in-chief. Despite enormous outcry, it took the President five days to lower the White House’s flags to half-staff in memorial to the five service members who died. As my good friend Rep. Louie Gohmert pointed out, “I think the position of the flag tells you a lot about the priorities of this White House.” So do the colors of it. Within hours of the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, the “people’s house” was bathing in rainbow lights. But when four fellow Marines and a sailor, our nation’s courageous and brave, were gunned down, where is that same urgency?
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.