Finally, we get a refreshingly honest update from Planned Parenthood. The nation’s number one abortion provider has long claimed that the termination of pregnancies only makes up about 3% of the services they provide. But that hasn’t fooled anyone, and the organization’s new president, Dr. Leana Wen, has apparently decided it’s time to change tack.
Dr. Wen recently tweeted a correction to a Buzzfeed headline, which claimed that under her stewardship Planned Parenthood “wants to focus on nonabortion health care.” Wen clarified that indeed abortion one of the organization's main priorites. While the fact that she came out and said it publicly was a shock, the truth she dropped certainly was not.
Dropping the Truth Bomb
Under the former president, Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood touted their “women’s health” services, playing down the role of abortion in the organization. At Liberty Nation, we have addressed both the 3% fib – a claim so obviously false that even The Washington Post debunked it. For example, they used to tout mammograms as one of their most crucial services, but the truth is they don’t perform any; they simply refer women to affiliated clinics that do.
Evidently, Dr. Wen is taking a more open approach. “First, our core mission is providing, protecting and expanding access to abortion and reproductive health care,” she tweeted. “We will never back down from that fight - it’s a fundamental human right and women’s lives are at stake.”
This is exactly the argument Planned Parenthood should be making: It’s open, honest, and shows their true beliefs. Whether abortion is a fundamental human right or not, that is the “pro-choice” perspective, and so it’s the justification they are obligated to use in this debate. Regardless of which side you’re on, Dr. Wen does at least deserve a little recognition for her honesty.
The Fundamental Rights
The founders of this nation laid out a few fundamental human rights in the Declaration of Independence, then wrote the Constitution and added the Bill of Rights to further expound on those rights and enshrine them in the armor of law.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Nowhere in the Declaration, Constitution, or Bill of Rights is abortion discussed. The idea that a woman has the right to terminate her pregnancy for any reason stems from the controversial Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade. The Justices argued that the 14th Amendment guaranteed some level of privacy from the government – an argument most conservatives and libertarians can probably get behind. However, they decided that a woman’s choice to terminate her pregnancy falls under that right to privacy.
We’ve covered this before. Life begins at conception – that’s a medically verifiable biological fact, at least according to the science as we currently understand it. Few, if any, well-educated abortion activists argue that the “clump of cells” isn’t technically a living organism; instead, they claim that that tiny living creature isn’t quite yet a person, or that it has a negligible worth until a certain point in its development. Some even go so far as to say that infants and small children have no right to be considered people, as they’re reliant on parents for survival.
But make no mistake – aborting a fetus, or killing a baby or toddler, because you don’t want the responsibility of parenthood is still taking another human life. For those of us who believe life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are the fundamental human rights, killing anyone for any reason outside of defense should be a clear violation of that first right. It’s no different from killing your adult neighbor to get out of a property boundary dispute or because he plays his music too loud at night. Who would expect the police, a prosecutor, and a jury of their peers to recognize the right to privacy in murdering an annoying neighbor?
