An Open Letter To Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood

Today I received an email from Cecile Richards, President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, on behalf of Planned Parenthood NJ. I'm pro-life (help out here), and I stay on email lists like this to keep informed about abortion-related activities in my area.

Here's what the email said:

Dear Jake,

Women must not be worse off after health care reform than they are now. I've said it, and repeated it, and fought for it for months. But it seems that lawmakers haven't been listening — not to me, not to you, not to the millions of women and men who desperately need a health care system that provides access to affordable, complete reproductive care.

A few days ago, the New York Times reported that health care reform could prohibit private insurance companies from covering abortion care — even those that currently do so. Anti-choice extremists aren't just trying to deny uninsured women access to reproductive care — they're fighting to make sure that women whose private plans currently cover abortion care lose their access as well.

This is a dangerous moment for women. If opponents of women's health succeed in hijacking health care reform, we'll be suffering the consequences for a generation or more. We need you now. Here's what you can do:

• Make an emergency contribution to Planned Parenthood. We're working the phones, the mail, and the internet day and night to build a war chest for this fight, and anything you can afford to pitch in will help our work — immediately.


• Call your senators now. The most effective way to demand that your senators stand up for women's health is by calling them directly — and we've made calling simple and quick with an online form.

We have no time to lose, and no room for error. Please, give what you can, speak out as loud as you can, and help me fight for our essential goal: women must not be worse off after health care reform than they are now.

Sincerely,
Cecile Richards

I feel compelled to respond.

Sorry, Cecile, but who exactly is an "opponent of women's health"? Do you really think we're a bunch of gravelly voiced old men leering at women and saying, "How do I give that one cancer? How do I make that one too sick to work?"

Really, we're just focused on the health of the youngest and most helpless of women, those between zero and forty weeks' gestation -- about six hundred thousand of which are killed every year. [1]

This anti-choice "extremist" is fighting on two fronts: to prevent the government from forcing me to pay for your killing of children in the womb, and to prevent you, Cecile, from pretending that willful slaughter of innocents isn't evil.

Don't get me wrong. I would fight against abortion whether or not my taxes fund it. I don't think killing a person, no matter how young, is a choice that the state should condone. But don't try to get me to pay for your abortions by tarring me as an "opponent of women's health".

Sincerely,
Jake Freivald
West Orange, NJ

By the way, if you'd like to see what this taxpayer-funded organization is doing with your money, I highly recommend their Speaking Of Sex podcast. I particularly recommend "Sex Toys, Sex Joys", "5 Ways to Make Safer Sex Sexy", and "The Anal Sex Show". After all, you're paying for it.

[1] The Guttmacher Institute says that about 1.2 million abortions were committed in the US in 2005 (the latest statistics they have on their fact sheet). Assuming that about half were female, that's six hundred thousand in utero girls. Of course, in some cultures, girls are aborted more often than boys. I hope the women who favor multiculturalism realize that fact.

---