Donald Trump supporting Planned Parenthood in any way, shape, or form is a non-starter for me, and it should be for you too. Let me explain.
During the tenth Republican debate in Texas last night, Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio accurately pointed out that Donald Trump defends America’s largest abortion provider as a wonderful institution. When pressed on the issue, Trump played innocent:
“As far as Planned Parenthood is concerned, I’m pro-life, I’m totally against abortion having to do with Planned Parenthood but millions and millions of women–cervical cancer, breast cancer–are helped by Planned Parenthood. So you can say whatever you want, but they have millions of women going through Planned Parenthood that are helped greatly… It does do wonderful things, but not as it relates to abortion… There are wonderful things having to do with women’s health, but not when it comes to abortion.”
But Planned Parenthood does not become even a redeemable organization, much less a wonderful one, just because it provides other services besides abortion. No amount of good done in offering other services makes up for the heinous evil of abortion, nor the reprehensible and illegal sale of baby bodies to turn a profit.
Planned Parenthood needs to be defunded and run out of town on a rail, no Ifs, Ands, or Buts.
It’s not okay to give money to evil organizations so long as they provide “other services” also.
Suppose a sex trafficker sets up shop in your town, pimping out little children for money as one of his many “other services” to the community. Before you condemn him, let me first assure you he also gives children lollipops and builds really nice playgrounds at the park for a lot of kids he doesn’t sell for sex.
Suppose also that this evil man turns a profit of around $100 million a year on his nationwide operation, with 70% of that profit coming from child prostitution. What would you say if the United States government were to give this hypothetical sex trafficker $500 million a year so long as the money given was accompanied with very specific instructions for this pimp to not spend any of the $500 million pimping out little children? What if the sex trafficker only spent that $500 million on providing the “other services” – giving out free lollipops and building playgrounds and offering sex education classes for children?
With those supposed safe-guards in place, would you be okay with the government supporting an operation like that to the tune of over half a billion dollars? No, of course not. At least I hope to God not. Yet a thing arguably as evil if not worse is happening right now in the Federal government continuing to fund Planned Parenthood.
Democrats and Some Republicans Praise and Support Planned Parenthood
On December 3, 2015 the United States Senate passed a bill that would have stopped the flow of over $500 million a year in government funding to Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion provider, in light of shocking videos released by The Center for Medical Progress which showed Planned Parenthood executives openly discussing the illegal and reprehensible sale of fetal tissue.
The bill was dead on arrival, of course, as President Barack Obama promptly made good on the promise he’d made to veto it before the vote was even called.
Democratic opponents to the bill have predictably attacked any Republican calls to defund or investigate Planned Parenthood by citing, as Donald Trump does, many good and useful women’s health services besides abortion which are provided by Planned Parenthood. Shamelessly trying to flip the narrative, they’ve counter-attacked by lobbing baseless ad-hominem accusations like so many grenades that their Republican rivals are actually waging a “War on Women” by pressing for Planned Parenthood to be held accountable.
But what are all these “other services” they tell us Planned Parenthood is providing? And how many of those services are actually necessary services that women can only receive from Planned Parenthood? Do we need Planned Parenthood specifically in order to see that these “other services” are offered, or can other organizations be funded or founded instead?
Free Condoms
Planned Parenthood gives away condoms for free. Is that one of these invaluable “other services” they’re talking about? Well the website for Planned Parenthood Southwestern Oregon has a page titled Confidential Teen Services on which, lo and behold, the first thing mentioned at the top of the page is free condoms. So, yes, apparently Planned Parenthood does count giving out free condoms as one of their discrete and invaluable services.
But passing out free condoms shouldn’t count as a service. I’m sorry, but condoms are not that expensive – you can buy them for an average of 40 cents each on Amazon right now – and to liken giving them away free to teenagers with performing an abortion is in no way, shape, or form a comparison of apples to apples.
Imagine logging onto your bank’s website to see them listing free lollipops as one of their services alongside auto loans and mortgages. Even that does not approach how laughable it is to count giving away free condoms as a service beside abortion.
Cancer Screenings and Mammograms
Some supporters of Planned Parenthood have claimed the organization provides cancer screenings and mammograms, and that should give us pause. Those are indeed valuable services we want women to have access to.
However, Cecile Richards, both the CEO and public face of Planned Parenthood, has admitted openly that her organization does not provide any mammograms whatsoever, but merely refers women to other health care providers for such things. And even insofar as Planned Parenthood clinics can or do provide other types of breast or cervical cancer screenings in their own offices, women can and do receive those services from other health care providers already.
So I ask you: if women are going to other health care providers anyway in order to receive mammograms and cancer screenings, why do we need Planned Parenthood to provide these services or serve as the go-between referring women who need or want these services to other providers?
Planned Parenthood Provides Many Services to Women Besides Abortion
Defenders of Planned Parenthood like Donald Trump and President Barack Obama point out all the many other useful services the organization provides to women. We are asked to see this organization as a one stop shop of sorts for women’s health, and it is more than implied that women will have nowhere else to turn for all of these other services if America’s leading abortion provider is itself aborted. Yet this is deceptive on a number of levels, not least because it suggests that abortion is only a small part of what Planned Parenthood offers women.
Can someone please tell me how many women go in and are given multiple “services” in addition to or leading up to an abortion? And when a woman comes in for an abortion and is given other services as well, are we supposed to lose sight of the abortion just because the woman was given more than just an abortion?
A couple years ago my wife and I traded our handsome little cross-over for a big 12-passenger van at a car dealership in Dickinson, North Dakota. Before making our final decision to purchase the van, however, the salesman allowed our family to take the van for a test drive to Wal-Mart and back. Once we’d made up our minds to buy the van, the salesman gave Lauren and I a pair of travel mugs with the dealership’s logo and contact information.
Now my question is this: How many services did the Ford dealership in Dickinson, North Dakota provide us that day – one or four? If you count the test-drive and the two free travel mugs, you’ll say we were provided four services. Would it have made five or six if they had offered to fill Lauren’s and my coffee mugs with some freshly brewed java?
But you and I both know full-well that car dealerships don’t make money giving away free travel mugs and test drives. They make their money selling automobiles, and that’s the only reason the dealership in Dickinson provided those other complimentary “services” to my wife and I that day. They were trying to sell us a van, and they did. Odds are very high this will not be the last vehicle we buy, and they want us to come back again to their dealership in the coming years and refer our friends and family for future auto purchases there. That’s how business works.
Just so, Planned Parenthood is in the business of providing abortions, and business is booming with 329,445 abortions in 2010. Much like a car dealership giving out free travel mugs, the reason Planned Parenthood provides all these other services for women is that they’re hoping to sell abortion. Thereafter they’re hoping to sell the bodies of the babies they butcher.
Planned Parenthood butchers babies, then sells their bodies for money.
That is all we need to know about the organization. The cold, hard truth is that the murder of babies is reprehensible in the extreme and it is the absolute bare minimum least we should do to insist that the government not give over half a billion dollars a year to an organization that brings in $164 million a year on abortion. Put simply, the United States government is subsidizing the mass slaughter and resale of its own unborn citizens. That is an intolerable evil and it must stop.
To those who want to object to defunding Planned Parenthood on the basis of the other services provided by Planned Parenthood, let me be clear:
Americans who claim Planned Parenthood is legitimized by providing “other services” besides abortion are like Germans in the 1940’s who legitimized Adolf Hitler remaining in power despite his murdering millions of Jews and other “undesirables.” Yes, Hitler stimulated the economy and provided lots of “other services” for the good of the German people. But not for a moment do we today suppose those “other services” Nazi Germany provided made up for the monstrous evil perpetrated at Hitler’s command, nor should we.
Just so, no amount of “other services” provided makes up for the evil Planned Parenthood is engaged in on a daily basis. There is no balancing these scales to a morally neutral place, and you’ve lost before you’ve begun if you want to gloss over the abortion question while you cry and whine about efforts to defund or prosecute Planned Parenthood being part of a bogus “War on Women.”
Teens not getting 40 cent condoms for free and women not receiving cancer screening services from Planned Parenthood they could and do receive elsewhere – this is nowhere near as pressing and needful a matter as unborn babies being crushed and burned and ripped out piece by piece from their mother’s womb. To suggest otherwise is to weigh an unknown number of hypothetical situations against a known number of real ones, then claiming the unknown hypothetical is stronger than the known reality.
Which is actually a need and which is a mere nicety and preference? That women get valuable but non-essential services from Planned Parenthood specifically which they can and do receive elsewhere, or that innocent children not be murdered and have their carcasses auctioned off?
Donald Trump Supporting Planned Parenthood
This is a bad deal. The only way in which the scales tip in favor of women against murdered babies is where women can vote and dead babies can’t. And that is why candidates like Donald Trump will talk out of both sides of their mouth, condemning abortion in one breath while praising and supporting America’s largest provider and promoter of abortions in the next.
If only these unborn babies had a voice, it would make theirs the more obvious and compelling case. But that is why we must be their voice, and we must be their vote.
Put simply, we cannot trust the man who wrote The Art of the Deal, the man who loves to constantly remind us what a great deal-maker he is, to make the right decision on this issue if elected to the Presidency. Come Super Tuesday, I hope my fellow Americans will make abundantly clear that moral ambiguity on this question will not be tolerated. For this reason among many others, Donald Trump should not win the Republican nomination.
No, that isn’t a drastic thing to say. No, that doesn’t make me a single issue voter. But defunding, investigating, and prosecuting Planned Parenthood absolutely should be a litmus test by which we measure the moral character of candidates for any public office, and especially the office of president. Donald Trump has failed that litmus test.
I don’t care how wealthy a man is, or how wealthy or great he promises to make America again. At the end of the day, we must remember the words of Jesus:
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.”
