By Judie Brown
Recently, a document began circulating around the nation's capital, and it fell into our hands as well. It is cleverly titled Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration: Steps for Improvement and Change.
The word on the street is that this intriguing piece of work won't stay in the public eye for too long, so if you want your own personal copy, you should probably download it sooner than later. That's recommendation number one.
The list of organizations endorsing the goals set forth in this publication reads like the "who's who" of America's most committed abortion advocates. Everything from Planned Parenthood to the Sierra Club to NARAL is included. My guess is that the combined energy of all those listed means that President-elect Obama is in for more pressure than he could possibly imagine. But then again, he is a Chicago politician, so he probably knows how to keep or break a promise, depending on the stakes.
This 55-page manifesto appears designed to get the greatest amount of funding possible for everything from increased dollars for Title X of the Public Health Service Act to demanding that more death and destruction be exported to the nations where the poor would much prefer a plow to a pill. But then again, America knows best, or so the population controllers think.
The list of needs is mainly focused on the multitudinous ways in which the government could expand its reach into sexual intimacy, so that not a single person can possibly evade the pressure to use birth control and abortion while remaining sexually active and self-indulgent. This may sound like a damning pronouncement about a very large group of high-profile organizations, but the history of the past 40 years tells us a lot about where they have succeeded and where they have failed.
The concept of failure is not in their strategy, of course, but that does not negate the reality. Here's but one example:
While the most recent reports say that abortion rates among teenagers are on the decline, they do not address the increasing incidence of sexually transmitted diseases among this same age group. Newsweek reported,
Public health initiatives have focused on reducing pregnancy and abortions among teenagers but haven't put as much thought into how to educate older groups. Teenagers, after all, do seem like the most vulnerable group. Millions of dollars have been poured into programs to educate teenagers about safe sex and contraceptives. By most accounts, those efforts have been fairly successful in targeting and changing the sexual health habits of teens. Centers for Disease Control statistics show teenage contraceptive use to have gone up noticeably between 1995 and 2005. The decline in abortion rates among teens mirrors a decline in teen pregnancies--from 107 for every 1,000 teenagers ages 15-19 in 1982, to 75 per 1,000 teenagers in 2002 (the most recent year for which data is available).
Please note that Newsweek says that teenagers are the most vulnerable group, but does not explain that teens are also the only group literally held hostage during scurrilous Planned Parenthood sex instruction courses, which are even more prevalent today than they were 10 years ago.
Newsweek appears to have literally partnered with organizations that promote sex education. Such people want to make sure that children of all ages are exposed to the philosophy underlying the reproductive health cartel. The sexualization of our children is the goal. These children are not having abortions at the rate they used to, but the problems they are dealing with – be they emotional, spiritual or physical – are not addressed in this one-sided examination of statistics.
Obviously, from Planned Parenthood's perspective, there has to be even more funding because it can point to the decreased teen abortion rate as a reason to provide more funds so that it can convince (brainwash) even more young people to buy into the sexual revolution it has fostered over the years.
One of the downsides of this sort of one-sided propagandizing is the fact that today, one of four adolescents has a sexually transmitted disease. Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America points out,
Pushing kids to be sexually active, withholding medical screenings to deny parents information about their teens, and encouraging young women to skip screenings for STDs are irresponsible policies that have put teens' health at risk.
Public health officials need to admit their failures that have led to kids paying the price. Funding irresponsible sex-ed programs, ones that encourage kids to be sexually active, twelve times higher than funding abstinence programs unsurprisingly results in more kids being sexually active. Experts note that a key prevention strategy is screening for STDs. Yet by making the morning-after pill available without a prescription, officials are discouraging young women from seeing a doctor when they are at risk of an STD.
Wright's analysis of the promiscuity project pushed by reproductive health proponents is accurate, but is not the tune the pied pipers of promiscuity play in their new document. Quite the contrary! Those who favor more government funding for "comprehensive sex education" programs are the very people who will not address failures, even when the result is death.
In fact, according to Planned Parenthood itself, its number-one goal is as follows:
"Planned Parenthood will ensure that sexuality is understood as an essential, lifelong aspect of being human and that it is celebrated with respect, openness, and mutuality."In response to this Jim Sedlak, STOPP's national director, writes,
Wow. Planned Parenthood doesn't see a cure for cervical cancer, or breast cancer, or stopping the spread of pelvic inflammatory disease or chlamydia as its number-one goal. Rather, it will focus its top priority on making sure that sex is celebrated!
We thought we must be misinterpreting this goal. Planned Parenthood provided eight paragraphs of further explanation of what it meant and we eagerly read it for clarification. What we found was PP talking about "Our statement of beliefs attests . . . to our recognition of the joy and fulfillment that the healthy expression of sexuality can bring to the human experience;" and "In many industrialized countries, parents and social institutions foster healthier, more accepting, and positive feelings about sexuality among young people;" and "Discomfort with sexuality . . . inhibits many parents from talking with their teens and prevents them from achieving positive, joyful sexual relationships themselves;" and "many politicians seem to want to punish people for non-procreative sex;" and, finally, "We must help people understand that the mind, body, and spirit are enriched by the healthy and responsible enjoyment of sex."
No, nobody is misinterpreting the blatant bias against human dignity that is fundamental to every page of this new document.
To my mind, the welfare of our entire nation, which resides in the hands of our children and our children's children, is at stake. We cannot allow Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration: Steps for Improvement and Change to become the social policy platform of the next four years.
So, sharpen your pencils, rev up your computers, buy some post cards, sign the Stop Planned Parenthood Tax Funding petition and get ready to exert pressure on any elected official who even tries to support the trash that is masquerading as strategy in this document.
Judie Brown is president of American Life League and a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life.
