Pro-Lifers Unleash on Dog Tweet
Believe it or not, Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards is a huge believer in adoption. For dogs.
Believe it or not, Planned Parenthood’s Cecile Richards is a huge believer in adoption. For dogs. Tuesday, before heading out on a national book tour, the boss of America’s richest abortion business decided to act out the title of her new memoir: Make Trouble. In a Twitter post that struck most people as either incredibly insensitive or shockingly unaware, Richards took a moment to pitch what her organization usually doesn’t: compassion.
Above a picture of her dachshund, Richards encourages people to #AdoptDontShop. Of course, the idea of rescuing dogs isn’t a bad one, but it’s certainly a stark contrast to what she’s been advocating for babies the last 12 years. Maybe if children were fluffy with four legs, she’d understand the importance of saving them too! Instead, she talks about giving pets homes while her own business spends its days ripping unborn children out of theirs. Unfortunately, that’s the hypocrisy of the Left: Forget the humans, save the dogs!
If Richards wants more Americans to adopt, you sure could have fooled us. Planned Parenthood is so obsessed with making a buck that the idea of adoption rarely — if ever — comes up. Sure, the organization will take credit for a few moms choosing life to feed the lie that it does more than abortion, but the numbers are hardly flattering. In its latest annual report, Planned Parenthood could only claim one adoption referral for every 83 abortions. If Cecile wants to rescue dogs, she might want to show a little more concern for their prospective owners.
Back in the mid-‘90s, when people still used the words “safe, legal, and rare” with a straight face, Planned Parenthood may have actually seen some value in adoption. It referred for 11,866 of them in 1994 — five times more than today. Almost 25 years later, the focus has changed. In this business, it’s about cash — not kids. And 3.5 million abortions later, Richards’s 12 years have proven how lucrative Planned Parenthood’s killing machine can be. Sitting on a record-setting $1.45 billion in revenue, the group can afford its pet political projects and massive leadership salaries. (At last check, Richards made $700,000 a year — almost twice the salary of the president of the United States.) Not bad for a “nonprofit.”
The only thing Planned Parenthood has more of than money is controversy. And both seem to be fueling Americans’ urgency to cut the organization’s taxpayer ties. They know, like we do, that if Planned Parenthood is spending 96 percent of its time on abortion, it certainly doesn’t need our $537 million for the measly four percent that’s left. For starters, abortion is a cash cow. It could just as easily pay for the rest of its operation with its profits. Secondly, how are we supposed to believe that the more than half-billion in federal and state funds is actually going to the tiny sliver of other services?
Simple. We can’t. Even if Richards’s group were trustworthy (a prospect that faded with every mammogram lie, every sexual abuse cover-up, every invoice for baby body parts), there’s no denying that the massive pool of taxpayer funds helps free up the money Planned Parenthood needs for the deadlier side of business — or its election hobbies. Sure, it’s illegal for Richards to spend a penny of government money on abortion or campaigning, but Congress makes it a whole lot easier to spend politically when it’s rewarding the group financially. Need proof? Check out the news from Wisconsin, where a Planned Parenthood clinic (one of 600 such clinics in the U.S.) has just been fined by the FEC for hiding more than $116,000 in support for Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Imagine how many of the other state chapters are operating under the radar, refusing to disclose their political expenses.
For those reasons (and so many more), I can understand the outrage from pro-lifers that Congress kept the taxpayer gravy train flowing in last month’s omnibus spending package. I also understand the limits of the current GOP majority, which is the biggest hurdle to accomplishing what 60 percent of Americans want: defunding Planned Parenthood. But some things are worth fighting for, and life is one of them. In the meantime, FRC is hoping that Donald Trump will do what Republicans did not: sever some of taxpayers’ financial ties to Richards’s group. Behind closed doors, there’s a serious discussion taking place right now in Washington about one of the weapons at the president’s disposal — a long-forgotten rule from the Reagan years that could blow an $80 million hole in Planned Parenthood’s accounts.
If the Trump administration revives the “co-location” regulation from the 1980s, Planned Parenthood could still get Title X funds, but it wouldn’t be able to offer those services in the same clinics where it performs abortions. It would have to split up its offices — probably at great expense. Ultimately, Planned Parenthood would be forced to choose between dropping its abortion services from any location that gets Title X dollars and moving those abortion operations offsite. Either way, it could take away a significant $80 million cushion from the group’s family planning funds. Until Republican reinforcements arrive, that would certainly help take the sting out of the current situation.
In the meantime, Richards is out on the road, missing her dog — and more importantly, missing the point. The next time Planned Parenthood’s president wants to rescue something, she might want to consider the next generation.
Originally published here.
MLK: 50 Years Later
The world was a different place after that horrible day in Memphis, when Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. stepped out on his hotel balcony and took what would be his last breaths. Just 39 when an assassin’s bullet killed him, Dr. King had already accomplished a lifetime of transformative work. How much more he could have done, we’ll never now. What we do know is that he changed the arc of history — forever.
Taken at the height of his influence, Rev. King would never live to see his dream of racial harmony realized. Even now, 50 years later, Americans feel the familiar strain that threatens some of Dr. King’s greatest accomplishments. In the five decades since his death, our country made progress, but the gulf between black and white still remains one of the most intense divide in America. And while the times may have changed, the solutions have not. There is one path to true racial reconciliation: the church.
“The church,” he wrote in Strength to Love, “must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state.” What motivated Rev. King and powered his movement was Scripture — an understanding that “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” Civil rights could not have been achieved if that light, powered by the religious freedom to shine it, had been extinguished. It’s what enables the church to speak out today on behalf of marriage, the unborn, the downtrodden, and the persecuted. It’s what powers the truth that everyone, regardless of race, gender, or social-economic status, has value.
When Dr. King almost single-handedly turned the tide against racial segregation in this country, he did it from the pulpits of America’s churches. Imagine where we would be now, as a nation, if pastors like the Rev. King didn’t have the freedom to make their voices heard on the cultural issues of the day. He understood then, as we do know, that religious liberty was the key to every other freedom on earth. Without it, he could never have advocated for the cultural change that took root in the hearts of people across this great land. If we want to preserve his memory, we have to start by defending the church’s right to speak into the racial gap — and to stand, as unbiased representatives of Christ.
Originally published here.
New Lows for Higher Ed: ‘Christian Privilege’ Workshops
You can’t earn a degree in religious intolerance, but George Washington University is more than happy to teach it. As part of its anti-faith indoctrination, members of the campus’s “inclusion office” are offering a special seminar that would make the college’s namesake gnash his wooden teeth — “Christian Privilege: But Our Founding Fathers Were All Christian, Right?”
Today’s workshop (which was scrubbed from the college’s webpage when the uproar started) is an exercise in liberal fanaticism. Hosted by the Multicultural Student Services Center (which ought to tell you everything you need to know about the equity of said seminar), the session promises to explain how Christians receive “unmerited perks from institutions and systems all across our country.” (I assume by “perks” they don’t mean the systematic punishment, suspension, firing, threatening, and marginalization that men and women of faith are currently experiencing.)
“By the end of the session,” The College Fix explains, “participants will be able to identify ‘at least three examples of Christian privilege’ and ‘at least three ways to be an ally with a non-Christian person.’” And, if students can’t get enough of GW’s prejudice, they can sign up for the entire privilege series: “heterosexual privilege,” “cisgender privilege,” “abled-bodied privilege,” “socio-economic privilege,” and “unconscious bias,” to name a few.
To most people, the idea is outrageous on its face. Not only because the university is singling out Christians but because GW has it all wrong. “NEWSFLASH,” one conservative tweeted, “Christians are the most persecuted religion in the world!” “90,000 Christians were killed for their beliefs, worldwide, in 2016,” another posted. “So, please, take your uninformed identity politics narrative, elsewhere.”
Unfortunately, this is the logical conclusion of the hyphenation of America. The Left poured the concrete into the foundation of class warfare, and now, we’re not just categories — we’re subcategories. And the tragic side effect of this movement is that our shared identity and pride in being Americans is slipping away. Of course, that’s by the Left’s design. Divide, then conquer.
Courtney Kirchoff is no fool. She understands exactly what liberals are after.
All George Washington University’s little lecture proves is Christians not only lack “privilege,” they’re one of the only groups still readily mocked and persecuted without retaliation… Guess what religious groups aren’t called out for lectures at GWU. I’ll give you three tries, but you’ll only need one. Our modern, liberal society hates Christianity, for all the morality it represents, and seeks its destruction. Simply picking on it, calling Christians “privileged” is but another round in their chamber to try to destroy us.
If there is hope for rebuilding the common ground that the Left is so desperately trying to take away from us, it is, ironically, in the very place liberals are focusing their attention: the church. Nowhere else will you find a more living, vibrant, diverse place than the community of Christ. Across racial, social, gender, and economic lines, there is no greater message of inclusion than the gospel. And, try as it might, even George Washington University can’t change that.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
