By Dave Andrusko
On Tuesday National Right to Life President and Pro-Life Perspective Host Carol Tobias talked about “The Anti-Life Platform of the Democratic Party.” Today she picks up on a related topic, the political agenda of the nation’s largest abortion chain.
The casual reader will easily miss that on its website, PPFA not only bills itself as “the nation’s leading sexual and reproductive health care provider,” but also adds “and advocate.”
“It is not a minor or unimportant add-on,” Mrs. Tobias explains at www.prolifeperspective.com . “Through its various lobbying and political action groups, Planned Parenthood is also a leading player on the political and legislative fronts, helping to keep the politicians in office who thwart pro-life legislation and keep abortion legal.”
A very interesting inside look ran in the March 26, 2012, edition of “The Nation” magazine called “The Genius of Cecile Richards”—Richards being PPFA’s president. You will want to listen, so let me mention just two points in Part One of Mrs. Tobias’s helpful overview.
Referring back in 2004, shortly after taking the helm of PPFA, Richards told Karen Mitchell that her organization had more members, employees and staff than the fifty state Democratic parties combined. She bragged of her ongoing political influence in the elections of 2006, 2008 and 2010.
She told Mitchell,
“The question is, what are we going to do with it [power]? And the answer is, We’re going to use it. We’re going to marry our current reality as the largest reproductive healthcare provider in this country with our opportunity to be the largest … advocacy organization in the country…”
Part One today talks about what Richards did with that power—and especially how the endorsement of Barack Obama by PPFA’s political arm paid off in influence with and access to the Obama Administration. According to the article, that included a promise to veto a budget bill if it defunded Planned Parenthood.
Mitchell wrote, “When hammering out a compromise for the Catholic bishops on contraceptive coverage this year, [the White House] placed three phone calls – one of them to Cecile Richards.” Of course, the “compromise” was nothing of the sort, which is why Catholic and Protestants and others have filed multiple lawsuits.
More about Planned Parenthood’s growing political muscle tomorrow. Be sure to pass this story along using your social media. (You can read Mitchells’ article at www.thenation.com/article/166670/genius-cecile-richards.)
