The Hartford Courant editorial board’s latest piece looks like it came straight out of Planned Parenthood’s PR department.
The Courant’s childlike faith in every word that comes forth from the mouth of Cecile Richards would perhaps be endearing — were it not that these are adults, and journalists, who just decided to take a pass on fact-checking. I grew up around newspaper talk; I am well familiar with the journalistic maxim “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” I was unaware of the new version: “If Planned Parenthood says anything, swallow whole and regurgitate.”
Prod at it a little, ask any questions at all, and the house of cards begins to fall. Take the mystifying claim that defunding Planned Parenthood would result in more abortions. The truth is that even as the national abortion rate has dropped, Planned Parenthood’s share of abortions done in the U.S. has climbed to approximately one-third. Make no mistake about it, this is what we pay for when we send Planned Parenthood hundreds of millions in tax money every year. The idea of separate accounting is a mental fiction.
Thanks to American Life League for this chart. I tried to go straight to PP’s annual reports, but at this time they are still milking the alleged “hack” of their site.
If you’re not familiar with the marketing term “loss leader,” now is a good time to incorporate it in your vocabulary and start using it to describe what Planned Parenthood does. When office supply stores advertise school supplies for mere pennies every August, they are not doing charity; they are hoping you will either end up making impulse purchases, or that you will become a repeat customer. So, first you go for the low-cost birth control. That seemingly responsible step can be negated by an adjustment in habits that comes with a greater feeling of invincibility, that is, taking risks you wouldn’t take if it weren’t available. Then you come back when you acquire an STD that you weren’t protected against, or become one of the statistically predictable percentage who get pregnant when it fails. Maybe it wasn’t even your fault — you were taking antibiotics, or became ill and couldn’t keep pills down, or did everything perfectly but were betrayed by a manufacturer’s screw-up. Regardless of how it happened, you are in a predicament, and guess who is waiting in the wings to help get you out of it? This is how “prevention” can actually increase business for abortionists. Former abortionist Carol Everett described it as an intentional strategy.
Courtesy of Daily Signal
The Courant continues: “President Cecile Richards says 1 in 5 women in the U.S. has visited a Planned Parenthood clinic.” Everybody knows that if Cecile Richards says it, it must be true! I am also still waiting for my money from Bill Gates for forwarding that chain e-mail, but I’m sure he’ll come through. I digress. “Where would these women go?” The Courant asks rhetorically. This one’s easy — there are thousands of community health centers that would be more deserving of that enormous chunk of federal money. Politifact busted Harry Reid for his exaggerated claims about how many women depend exclusively on Planned Parenthood: “Planned Parenthood saw 2.7 million patients in 2013…Even if every Planned Parenthood patient had no other health care options, the group would have seen about 2 percent of women…” Reid’s embellishment was far worse than what The Courant tries to imply, but visiting Planned Parenthood once in a lifetime is a far cry from being devastated without it.
In keeping with the rest of this ridiculous editorial, the closing paragraph calls the Center for Medical Progress’s videos “highly edited and possibly bogus.” Hello…Earth to Courant! How exactly did they edit concerns about “getting caught” into Savita Ginde’s mouth? Do people usually worry about “getting caught” when they’re not aware of having done something wrong? Did anybody on The Courant’s editorial board actually watch the full footage that has been available all this time?
I shouldn’t have to do The Courant’s homework for them. That isn’t why people buy papers. It would be nice if I got paid twice for doing the same job…but I guess that only happens at Planned Parenthood.
