As corporations cut ties with abortion giant, Catholic universities should at least do the same
Georgetown University
As corporations and governments face increasing pressure to cut ties with scandal-plagued Planned Parenthood, let’s not forget the obvious: Catholic colleges ought to do the same.
Our latest review of Catholic college websites identifies an additional 63 [more than 150 colleges were cited in Cardinal Newman Society’s 2011 report] instances of collusion with Planned Parenthood since 2011.
Some of the Catholic colleges host, honor and even employ current and former employees of the abortion giant. Some point students toward volunteer opportunities, internships, jobs and even the “medical services” of Planned Parenthood. Still other colleges host Planned Parenthood speakers to push its wicked agenda.
Georgetown University, always the poster boy for corrupt Catholicism, seems to have no qualms about hiring current and former Planned Parenthood employees. For instance, the associate general counsel of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Zoe Segal-Reichlin, is an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown.
Others at Georgetown who have been employed or worked on projects for Planned Parenthood include nurse-midwifery instructors Jennifer Demma and Debora Dole, demography professor John May, global health professor Rebecca Reingold and international health professor Sameh El-Saharty.
Loyola Marymount University
The faculty profile for Sara Ainsworth, a visiting assistant professor at Seattle University School of Law, touts the fact that she has served as senior counsel of Legal Voice for more than a decade. Legal Voice advocates abortion rights and same-sex “marriage.” Five years ago, Ainsworth co-authored a report on The Deceptive Practices of Limited Service Pregnancy Centers (i.e., pro-life crisis pregnancy centers) for Planned Parenthood and Legal Voice, and the publication is listed right on her C.V. on the university’s website. The following year, she fought for a bill in the Washington State legislature that would violate the free speech rights of pro-life clinics by requiring them publicly to announce that they do not perform or refer for abortions.
Even when not hired by a college, Planned Parenthood employees are sometimes put in front of a class. The College of St. Rose in Albany, N.Y., brings in a Planned Parenthood representative to teach the “Human Sexuality” class about “safety and equipment for protection.” This past spring, the president of Regis College near Boston wrote a public letter celebrating the volunteer work of nursing students at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Grenada.
The referrals to student internships and job placements with Planned Parenthood continue. For some colleges—including Boston College, Stonehill College, the University of Dayton and the University of San Diego—Planned Parenthood seems a natural fit for women’s studies, gender studies and sociology majors, which may say something about the way these subjects are taught. But alarmingly, some colleges also prod students in health-related majors into careers peddling birth control; these include DePaul University and Mount Saint Mary’s University of California.
The worst offense, however, has to be when a college advertised as Catholic refers the son or daughter of a Catholic family to Planned Parenthood for “medical services.” We found clear evidence of this at several colleges, and no doubt it occurs more frequently around the country.
Is this on a Catholic University website? (Screenshot from Mount St. Mercy’s ‘Sexual Health Resources‘)
Meanwhile, Craig Klugman, the incoming chairman of health sciences at DePaul University in Chicago—in the diocese of Archbishop Cupich, who derided Planned Parenthood’s form of women’s healthcare—has publicly endorsed the services of the clinic where his mother once worked. “I always viewed my mom as doing important community health work for women who could not get services elsewhere because of finances, lack of education, or living in fearful relationships,” he wrote. And he has defended Planned Parenthood’s disbursement of aborted fetal parts as “a legal and (debatably) ethical enterprise” with “the intent of saving lives and improving the quality of life.”
Klugman’s blog post was then reposted by Georgetown University, with the caveat that the views on the website “do not necessarily represent” those of the Jesuit institution. But do they?
