I have been watching the drama between the Susan G. Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood unfold over the last few day, with a feeling of restlessness that I haven't had in a long time. There is a feeling of two cultural giants in an epic wrestling match here.
Planned Parenthood has positioned themselves as the victim in this scenario. They were simply going about their business when the big bully Komen Foundation came along and took away a bunch of their money.
In the mean time the Komen Foundation has had their website hacked, been threatened, and been put through a media fire storm. Apparently the criteria that proves whether or not an organization cares about women is if they support Planned Parenthood ... fully, without question. After all, what is there to question?
Very quickly the whole issue of Komen vs. Planned Parenthood became about abortion - one thing that many people might question about that organization. Supporters of Planned Parenthood were quick to play the political card, they claimed that Komen had caved to right-wing pressure. Pro-life supporters rejoiced, but later found themselves thinking Komen had caved to left-wing pressure and the pro-choice lobby.
So take a moment and let this be about abortion. Is there any room for questions and qualms when dealing with Planned Parenthood?
Certainly! Especially if, like me, you think abortion is morally wrong and intrinsically bad for women, families, and society.
Planned Parenthood, for all their posturing as a dispenser of health services for women, is, in fact, the number one provider of abortions in the U.S. This is a real irony. On the one hand they do work to provide health services for uninsured and under-insured women. Yet they also abort about 300,000 babies a year. They support the lives and health of about 3 million patients, yet kill a number equivalent to 10% of those they help.
These numbers are startling. Some statistics show that in the four years the Auschwitz was open that 1.2 million Jews were killed in the gas chambers there. Planned Parenthood takes the lives of babies at a similar rate, and yet we are expected to look at the good they do over the deaths they enable.
Of course, those who support abortion will complain that a woman has a right to do with her body as she wishes, that those fetuses are not babies, that no baby should live an unloved life, that if abortion is outlawed women will find more dangerous methods to abort unwanted pregnancies, etc. I know the decision and situations that lead to a woman choosing to have an abortion are complex, frightening, and difficult. But when it comes down to it, death is death. There can be no doubt that when a woman is pregnant, that which is within her is alive. After an abortion it (he/she) is not.
Komen's mission is to save lives from breast cancer. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that they'd not support an organization that brings death to 300,000 people a year - some of them female, if that makes a difference; women who will never be because someone snuffed their life before they could be born.
Komen still states that their decisions to de-fund and re-fund Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with politics. I would agree that such a decision should not be made for political expediency. It should be about moral conviction, conscience, and principle.
Are supporting health and taking lives moral issues? Undoubtedly!
The question that has to be answered is this: Is it moral to support an organization that helps many even if it actively takes the lives of a large number of people in the process? For my part, the lives that are intentionally taken outweighs the good that might be done.
Planned Parenthood has positioned themselves as the victim in this scenario. They were simply going about their business when the big bully Komen Foundation came along and took away a bunch of their money.
In the mean time the Komen Foundation has had their website hacked, been threatened, and been put through a media fire storm. Apparently the criteria that proves whether or not an organization cares about women is if they support Planned Parenthood ... fully, without question. After all, what is there to question?
Very quickly the whole issue of Komen vs. Planned Parenthood became about abortion - one thing that many people might question about that organization. Supporters of Planned Parenthood were quick to play the political card, they claimed that Komen had caved to right-wing pressure. Pro-life supporters rejoiced, but later found themselves thinking Komen had caved to left-wing pressure and the pro-choice lobby.
So take a moment and let this be about abortion. Is there any room for questions and qualms when dealing with Planned Parenthood?
Certainly! Especially if, like me, you think abortion is morally wrong and intrinsically bad for women, families, and society.
Planned Parenthood, for all their posturing as a dispenser of health services for women, is, in fact, the number one provider of abortions in the U.S. This is a real irony. On the one hand they do work to provide health services for uninsured and under-insured women. Yet they also abort about 300,000 babies a year. They support the lives and health of about 3 million patients, yet kill a number equivalent to 10% of those they help.
These numbers are startling. Some statistics show that in the four years the Auschwitz was open that 1.2 million Jews were killed in the gas chambers there. Planned Parenthood takes the lives of babies at a similar rate, and yet we are expected to look at the good they do over the deaths they enable.
Of course, those who support abortion will complain that a woman has a right to do with her body as she wishes, that those fetuses are not babies, that no baby should live an unloved life, that if abortion is outlawed women will find more dangerous methods to abort unwanted pregnancies, etc. I know the decision and situations that lead to a woman choosing to have an abortion are complex, frightening, and difficult. But when it comes down to it, death is death. There can be no doubt that when a woman is pregnant, that which is within her is alive. After an abortion it (he/she) is not.
Komen's mission is to save lives from breast cancer. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that they'd not support an organization that brings death to 300,000 people a year - some of them female, if that makes a difference; women who will never be because someone snuffed their life before they could be born.
Komen still states that their decisions to de-fund and re-fund Planned Parenthood has nothing to do with politics. I would agree that such a decision should not be made for political expediency. It should be about moral conviction, conscience, and principle.
Are supporting health and taking lives moral issues? Undoubtedly!
The question that has to be answered is this: Is it moral to support an organization that helps many even if it actively takes the lives of a large number of people in the process? For my part, the lives that are intentionally taken outweighs the good that might be done.
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