Planned Bullyhood

Meg T. McDonnell | Tuesday, 18 September 2012

A new book gives an insider's view of the Susan G. Komen Foundation vs. Planned Parenthood battle.

Planned Bullyhood: The Truth Behind the Headlines about the Planned Parenthood Funding Battle with Susan G. Komen for the Cure By Karen Handel Howard Books (September 11, 2012) Hardcover: 304 pages
ISBN: 1451697945

On January 31 this year the Associated Press broke the news that Susan G. Komen for the Cure, an organization dedicated to ending breast cancer, would no longer be writing grants to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the United States and a self-described leader in women’s health care.

For the pro-life camp, the news of the break between the two organizations meant a relief from the boycott of Komen in which many pro-lifers had participated. From the pro-abortion camp, the break brought an outcry alleging that Komen no longer really cared about women. The spilt between the two women’s groups created a media furor, and at the time, a public relations nightmare for the Komen Foundation. The result was that, three days after the AP story broke, Komen reversed its decision. Meanwhile, basic facts of the parting of ways were overlooked.

To begin, Komen had been funding Planned Parenthood for some 20 years, but at the time of the break their grants totaled roughly $700,000 a year, a notably small portion of Planned Parenthood’s annual one billion dollar budget.

Secondly, Planned Parenthood grants were being cut largely because they were “crappy grants,” as one Komen employee characterized them -- ”crappy” not because of what Planned Parenthood was doing, but because of what they were not doing.

At the time they ceased funding Planned Parenthood Komen was working on a grant strategy overhaul. Their new grant focus was direct screening and intervention—in other words, mammograms and treatment—neither of which Planned Parenthood offers; it was using Komen grants to offer referrals for these services. This meant two things: one, there was no way to be certain that grant money was directly used for the fight against breast cancer, and two, there was no way Planned Parenthood could follow up to see if women were actually getting breast cancer treatment. This is what made Planned Parenthood grants “crappy” in the eyes of some in Komen.

Then, there was the pesky fact that the Komen grant contract specifically stated that organizations under investigation—at the state or federal level—could not receive grants. Other organizations had had their Komen grants revoked under this clause, yet Planned Parenthood had not, though their organization faced numerous investigations at the state level, and a federal investigation had recently begun. Some Planned Parenthood affiliates had even had their state funding removed -- a further disqualification. In short, Komen was acting well within the bounds of its own rules. But that didn’t stop Planned Parenthood, their supporters, and many members of the media from ignoring the facts and declaring war.

According to a new book, Planned Bullyhood: The Truth Behind the Headlines about the Planned Parenthood Funding Battle with Susan G. Komen for the Cure,written by former Komen vice president, Karen Handel, the reproductive health giant breached a “gentle-ladies agreement” with the breast cancer charity and incited a media firestorm surrounding Komen’s decision to halt their Planned Parenthood grants. The relentless pressure from the pro-abortion movement resulted in a reversal of Komen’s decision, despite the pro-life movement’s best efforts to support Komen by donating to their organization, sending supportive emails, and buying the Komen pink paraphernalia which pro-lifers had long resisted out of principle. Subsequently, Handel, a newer hire and a pro-lifer (which was publicly known due to her former political career) stepped down from her post at Komen.

In this tell-all, Komen insider book, among the many insights Handel offers, one point is made startlingly clear—the Komen vs. Planned Parenthood debacle was a calculated battle, instigated by Planned Parenthood as a tactic in the trumped up “War on Women” strategy. This “war” is a constructed narrative which says that anyone who doesn’t support unequivocally abortion, free contraception at the cost of religious freedom, or any other reproductive technology must not really care about women -- a claim that is patently absurd. Yet that is the narrative Planned Parenthood and friends seem to think is necessary.

In fact, as Handel explains, what should have been an easy decision to cut off Planned Parenthood was complicated by the politics and opinions regarding Planned Parenthood among even Komen members who were sympathetic to the influential women’s group. “Komen’s new communications vice president noted that Planned Parenthood was ‘under the gun,’” Handel explains, “and that if Komen ended the grants, our organization would deal Planned Parenthood ‘a body blow.’” This is a startling claim considering both how little Komen grants contributed to Planned Parenthood’s large budget and the fact that other organizations had be cut off by Komen for less severe violations of its rules.

But the fact of the matter is that Planned Parenthood was under intense national scrutiny because of the recently begun federal investigation, a sizable and growing young pro-life movement, and continued gains in legislation to inform mothers and protect the unborn child. A recent exposé, coordinated by pro-life activist, Lila Rose, caught Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards lying when she claimed to offer mammograms to women. Even so, Komen wanted this break between the two women’s groups to go smoothly, without accusations of political bias or media furor for either organization.

Because of such wishes, prior to the media blitz launched by Planned Parenthood, Komen worked closely with Hilary Rosen, a communications and media consultant at a firm called SKDKnickerbocker, and Brendan Daly, a PR consultant from a firm called Ogilvy. As Handel explains, both these consultants had close ties with Planned Parenthood and many of their political friends.  

Rosen’s partner at SKDKnickerbocker is Anita Dunn, former head of communications for the Obama Administration. Many within Komen were well aware of Rosen’s “heavy hitter” status in DC, her frequent meetings at the White House and her close relationship with Planned Parenthood. For Daly’s part, he had worked with Cecile Richards, at Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s office, and identifies himself on his resume as a Democratic strategist.

According to Handel, though many in Komen saw these connections as beneficial in the navigating of this break—“Komen never saw Planned Parenthood as our enemy,”—these consultants may have aided the coordinated attack Planned Parenthood launched.

“Much was made about me being a conservative and that my personal views drove the decision within Komen, which was not true. But if my personal beliefs were fair game,” she continues, “why weren’t those who had views on the other side of the aisle subject to the same scrutiny?”

Her reporting and support of the facts of Komen’s decision make it clear that it was not beliefs regarding abortion that dictated Komen’s funding decision with regard to Planned Parenthood. 

Though Handel was painted by the media and others as a staunch pro-lifer, Georgia Right to Life declined to endorse her in her previous run for Georgia governor primarily because of her acceptance of in-vitro fertilization, along with her acceptance of abortion in the case of rape and incest.. 

Importantly, Handel’s telling of her story adds to another growing narrative in America—that women’s views on these issues are not as easily categorized as Planned Parenthood and friends would like to claim.

The Women Speak For Themselves movement -- which I have been assisting from its early days -- is another example of this push-back against the narrative that unequivocal support for abortion, contraception and reproductive rights on demand defines a person who cares about women. WSFT members are as diverse as they come in age, religion, socioeconomic background, and positions on contraception, abortion, and other related issues (though as an organization it’s unwaveringly pro-life). But they are united in insisting that women can think for themselves and speak for themselves on these issues.

Handel’s description of the bullying tactics we are up against, but her fighting spirit will strike a chord with the many women who are sick of being “spoken for” by the reproductive health political establishment. As Handel says: “Planned Parenthood brought Komen to its knees, counting on no-one having the guts to stand up to them. Well, what Planned Parenthood didn’t count on is me.”

Meg T. McDonnell is the Communications Director for the Chiaroscuro Foundation. 

The Chiaroscuro Institute, an independent public charity related to the Chiaroscuro Foundation, has partnered with Karen Handel and her publisher in promotion of her book.

First published by MercatorNet.

This article is published by Meg T. McDonnell and MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons licence. You may republish it or translate it free of charge with attribution for non-commercial purposes following these guidelines. If you teach at a university we ask that your department make a donation. Commercial media must contact MercatorNet for permission and fees.

End Gendercide in the US! Planned Parenthood in New York City

...and today Democrats defeated a bill to outlaw sex-selective abortion, saying the problem does not exist!

End Gendercide in the U.S.!

Undercover in Austin, Texas, where a woman is advised on how she can delay an abortion decision and wait to find out if she's carrying a boy or girl - so she can have the baby killed if it's a girl.  And defraud Medicaid in the process.

This Sad – and Glorious – Day

MONDAY, 24 JANUARY 2011

By Robert Royal

This is a sad day in America.

Even the muddled minds who combined bad science and poor legal reasoning to give us Roe v. Wade in 1973 probably would not have imagined that by 2011 almost 50 million babies would have been aborted in the United States. Or that, as we learned last week, over 40 percent of the pregnancies in New York City end in feticide.

If these numbers do not shock you, let me offer a friendly suggestion: you are suffering from a numbness so great that you don’t even know how to react any longer. And I confess to suffering from the same syndrome.

The days are long past when such mayhem could be justified as necessary for “women’s lives” or “reproductive freedom.” When nearly half of all children on the way to being born are summarily killed in a city like New York, you’re not talking about hard cases anymore. You’re looking at a strange and lethal blindness by people who think it’s the rest of the country that is violent and a prey to dangerous beliefs.

I’ve been looking at reports about the lucrative butchery at abortion clinics since 1980, but I was still shocked this past week at the story coming out of Philadelphia. I’ll spare you the details, but you can read about them at

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOM8K2HklZK17c0mbflBO7Th7Pzg?docId=97816a13b1b443f48dade38143b90132

if you have the stomach for it. Some have tried to play this down as just unusual abuse by a clinic in a poor area. But even the medically “proper” abortion clinics are revolting, and stories of mangled fetal bodies thrown in garbage pails and callously disposed of in dumpsters have been known, and routinely ignored, by the mainstream press for decades.

This week, a former Planned Parenthood clinic director, told the moving story of what turned her towards pro-life beliefs and Catholicism (see http://www.catholic-sf.org/news_select.php?newsid=22&id=58048). The last straw was when she watched on ultrasound as a thirteen-week-old fetus squirmed away from the cannula that a doctor positioned in order to suck it out of the mother’s womb. Which he did, as she looked on in horror, joking to the nurse he ordered to turn on the suction, “Beam me up, Scotty.”

Vile.

That’s the kind of coarseness that thirty-eight years of an abortion regime has produced, paradoxically most often among defenders of “choice,” who consider themselves compassionate and civilized.

But today around noon, something quite different will take place, as it has since these horrors were legalized. Tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers will march in the freezing January cold on the National Mall in Washington. The numbers are always debated and do not much matter. As usual, The Washington Post will probably tuck it back in the Metro section. Several years ago, asked why pro-abortion events appeared on the front page and pro-life events, when they were even covered, in inconspicuous places, thePost ombudsman commented that reporters tended not to know any pro-lifers.

No matter. I was inoculated in the 1960s against political demonstrations. When I saw, after very little acquaintance, what they are usually about, I stayed away. They almost always embody egotism, self-seeking, and self-righteousness – not to mention self-deception – writ large, and cast as a kind of entertainment with low production values.

But not the pro-life march. The people who take the trouble to come every year – young and old, men and women, Catholics and other Christians, Jews, Muslims, and even a few atheists for life – get nothing personally out of it except, perhaps someday, to live in a less spoiled and murderous culture. Standing in the freezing cold for several hours, often with rain or snow falling, is no fun. And the people who do it don’t expect it to be.
Yet I come away from it every year, humbled and inspired by people who actually do care, disinterestedly, about others.

Pro-lifers continue to be criticized, of course, for their alleged “love affair with the fetus and lack of concern for women and babies after they are born.” This is the rankest nonsense. To take just the example of the Catholic Church, we are the clearest pro-life voice in this country and the whole world, and we also administer the most extensive network of relief agencies and healthcare facilities of any private organization anywhere.

It’s true that Catholics put life questions and other matters on different planes, but that’s because it’s where they belong. There is simply no just reason to take innocent human life anywhere, including in the womb. By contrast, there are multiple and sometimes conflicting opinions about policies to care for women, children, and the poor. And concerned people may reasonably pursue one or the other – and, imagine, even change their minds as circumstances dictate, about what may be most effective.

The popes have made this clear, and our American bishops have followed suit to a degree. The bishops’ document, Faithful Citizenship, states the differing moral status of such questions, which is settled Catholic principle. But then blurs the distinction with far too much confusing detail about social justice obligations, a holdover from a time when matters had not been thoroughly thought through. Serious work needs to be done about this, even among Catholics, who have shown a tendency to take the lack of clarity as an opportunity to misunderstand what our bishops have said.

But over and above these theoretical considerations, today there will be yet another moving testament to the fact that the will to defend innocent human life is far from dead in America. A slim majority of Americans now describe themselves as pro-life, the result of many years of argument and witness. No other nation on earth has had so long and dedicated a pro-life movement, and if abortion is ever seen for the outrage it is in world opinion, our people will deserve no little credit for having kept the flame alive.
This is a glorious day in America.

Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

© 2011 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org

The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.
Retrieved January 23, 2011 from http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/this-sad-and-glorious-day.html

UnPlanned

Sheila Liaugminas | Monday, 17 January 2011

Unplanned: The Dramatic True Story of a Former Planned Parenthood Leader's Eye-Opening Journey across the Life Line


An American woman has just released a harrowing book about her experiences as head of a Planned Parenthood clinic.

"I know there are many people here tonight sitting in on this webcast from Planned Parenthood, and I want you to know, I was one of you, I sat in on these calls, too."

Abby Johnson was speaking to over 21,000 people across the nation and beyond, on a webcast widely promoted and globally available. It was the eve of the launch of her book UnPlanned and anticipation was intense. It’s the fascinating story of her journey from gullible college student raised in a pro-life Christian home to her recruitment into the abortion industry to the day her work there changed her life forever. The book was never intended to be an expose of Planned Parenthood. But her tale runs straight through it.

Deception
The abortion industry relies on controlling the message. It has from the beginning of legalized abortion in America. Over the decades, it has had few high-profile defections to blow the cover. One of the original founders of NARAL Pro-Choice America, the group largely responsible for the passage of Roe v. Wade, eventually converted and took this confession to YouTube: “We made it all up. One of our strategies to export abortion across the land was to deny what we knew to be true, that abortion kills an existing human being.” They also made up numbers and distorted facts to sway judges, he said. Dr Bernard Nathanson, a powerful witness to the inside story behind the success of abortion activism, witnessed the powerful truth of what abortion is when he saw it on ultrasound.

In September 2009, that’s exactly what turned Abby Johnson’s life around, in about ten minutes. On an otherwise normal day at work as the director of a Texas Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, Johnson was startled to be called into one of the rooms to assist in an ultrasound abortion.

She never assisted, and they never did ultrasounds. “I felt a moment’s reluctance outside the room. I never liked entering this room during an abortion procedure.”

That denial, both visceral and calculated, is central to the story of abortion in America in general, and Planned Parenthood’s role in particular.

Johnson was raised pro-life, but “if you’d put me up to a debate, I would’ve lost, because it’s something we didn’t discuss a lot.” When facts are fuzzy, they are easily manipulated. Johnson was recruited on her college campus by a nice woman in a hot pink booth” convincing her that “Planned Parenthood’s goal is to make abortion rare, except for women in dire need.” Johnson was finessed on the spot by the slick marketing job. “Her compassion really captured me..We both cared about people… I really wanted to help hurting people. I was glad I’d met this woman.”

Through her eight years with Planned Parenthood, after two abortions of her own, Johnson counseled women about contraception and the ultimate choice of abortion. But she lived in a numbed denial, and never knew the facts about conception, pregnancy and what its termination meant. Until ‘The Ultrasound,’ the account that constitutes the very brief but breathtaking first chapter of her book. She wanted to “help hurting women,” but she recoiled from the procedure room, telling herself “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to take part in an abortion.” Her instincts were keenly alert to realities she never learned but somehow knew on a deeper level.

Her job in this instance was to apply lubricant and manoeuvre the ultrasound probe over the patient’s belly “to capture the image of the foetus.” In the countless ultrasound images she’d seen, Johnson admits, “this time the image was complete. I could see the entire, perfect profile of a baby.”

She wasn’t prepared. “Just like Grace at twelve weeks, I thought, remembering my very first peek at my daughter, three weeks before, snuggled securely inside my womb. The image now before me looked the same, only clearer, sharper. The detail startled me. I could clearly see the profile of the head, both arms, legs, and even tiny fingers and toes. Perfect.”

She was seized with anxiety. “What am I about to see? My stomach tightened. I don’t want to watch what is about to happen.” What she saw was a suction tube as the abortionist inserted it into the woman’s uterus and maneuvered it closer to the baby. “The foetus doesn’t feel pain. I had reassured countless women of this as I’d been taught by Planned Parenthood. The foetal tissue feels nothing as it is removed.”

She watched the screen with horror, as the baby instinctively recoiled from the invader. “This child knew its life was in danger,” Johnson said. And what she describes next is horrible, the abortion she witnessed in real time. “Before this, I never knew the child in the womb felt pain or felt anything. I believed this in order to justify abortion. I really felt betrayed.”

“What was in this woman’s womb just moments ago was alive,” she says in the book. “It wasn’t just tissue, just cells. That was a human baby—fighting for life! A battle that was lost in the blink of an eye. What I have told people for years, what I’ve believed and taught and defended, is a lie.”

Redemption
If so fundamental a message as that is false, what else does the abortion industry falsify in order to profit as a business and attract new clients? It’s extremely rare to get this firsthand account from someone inside Planned Parenthood. Telling it is important to Abby Johnson’s conversion.

Among its revelations are several key clarifications. One recurring distortion is that contraception prevents pregnancy and therefore, the need for abortion. Johnson was using contraception both times she became pregnant and aborted. “When I started to work for Planned Parenthood counselling women, they were almost all contracepting,” she explained. “It didn’t make sense…”

But contraception is small change. In management level meetings, Planned Parenthood revealed their goal of increasing their number of surgical abortions with monthly quotas. They also used a map targeting specific facilities using non-affiliated abortionists, with the goal of “turning every one of them into a Planned Parenthood provider.”

Another myth they use is that the compassionate people are inside the clinic, while the people outside are scary, judgmental, hostile and angry. The Planned Parenthood recruiter told Abby “that some pretty aggressive anti-choice protesters came to the clinic to use scare tactics to keep women from getting the help they needed… and shame them.” Once she crossed the fence, she learned the truth about “those people praying outside my window” who constantly offered help. “I was a mess,” she writes. “I was a total disaster... I was completely broken, and I needed somebody to fix me, and that’s what they started to do.”

Though Planned Parenthood slapped her with a lawsuit and restraining order, Johnson was fortified. “I was telling the truth,” she says. “They were trying to silence me. Planned Parenthood says this is about the freedom to make choices. But this was them not respecting my freedom of choice, my freedom to be pro-life… But one of the reasons they did this was to make an example, and show other employees that ‘this could be you, if you cross that fence, this could be you defending yourself against us. They wanted to instil fear in their employees. They do that often and they do it well.”

So her message at the end of the webcast, as she was about to release UnPlanned and be released from its implications, Johnson had this message:

“If you are pro-life, have a plan of action when somebody like me comes to you and says ‘I want to get out of this industry.’ When somebody like me walks into your office, you’d better be ready to help them.

“For people who are pro-choice advocates or in Planned Parenthood on this call, I want you to know that there is a peace and a joy that you don’t even know…You’re probably embarrassed to say where you work. You don’t have to be in that shameful environment anymore. It’s filled with pain and grief, but on the other side of the fence, there’s compassion and healing…

“I want you to critique this book and try to criticize it, find something that is not true in it. I bet you’ll have a hard time.”

Everyone will, in more ways than one. But it’s a dis-ease we all need to confront.

Sheila Liaugminas is an Emmy Award winning journalist. She blogs on American politics atSheilaReports. UnPlanned is available at Ignatius.com.
Retrieved January 21, 2011 from http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/unplanned_release/

Less than meets the eye: Planned Parenthood head thanks rebellious nuns

The story of the rebellious nuns who, in opposition to the Bishops, signed a letter about the health care legislation then in Congress is a sad commentary in so many ways. One way has to do with the nuns themselves and the deterioration of their orders. But another has to do with the uncritical way in which their gross misrepresentation of who they are and what they represented was taken up uncritically and amplified through the mainstream media without retraction or apology, as far as I have seen.

From the CNA article linked below:

"The group NETWORK claimed in a March 17 letter to the House of Representatives that it represented 59,000 women religious across the U.S. It urged members of Congress to support the bill.

"Their statement was uncritically reported by the Associated Press. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and others working to pass the legislation invoked the sisters’ endorsement for support.

"On March 18 U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) spokeswoman Sr. Mary Ann Walsh said NETWORK “grossly overstated” their numbers.

“'The letter had 55 signatories, some individuals, some groups of three to five persons. One endorser signed twice,” she added. “There are 793 religious communities in the United States,' Sr. Walsh said.

"Another group of women religious, the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR), issued a statement saying it represented 10,000 sisters and supported the U.S. bishops’ criticisms of the Senate health care bill."

Planned Parenthood head thanks rebellious nuns
Planned Parenthood head thanks religious sisters for ‘critical support’ of health care bill :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)