2019 has been a year for the books. The March for Life in Washington, D.C. in January drew an enormous amount of pro-life advocates from all different backgrounds (estimated to be over 500,000), from all over the country. But then, just a week later, laws were passed that pushed the abortion agenda on the state-level. New York was first. And then Virginia. And then Rhode Island. Many other states have plans to expand access to abortion and remove the few restrictions that are still in place.

The same groups that are pushing for abortion-access to increase have been pushing Comprehensive Sexuality Education for teenagers – these are programs that fiercely attack children and who they were created to be, while not considering abstinence-based education or sexual risk avoidance programs as viable options. Comprehensive sex education programs “are highly controversial, because they go far beyond traditional sex education, as they indoctrinate youth to embrace radical sexual and gender ideologies, promote sexual rights and abortion, and encourage promiscuity, high-risk sexual behaviors, and sexual pleasure, even to the very youngest of children. In short, these programs are designed to dramatically alter the sexual and gender norms of society” (comprehensivesexualityeducation.org*).

Just one example of this is happening in Colorado. A state-proposed bill, HB-1032, has been introduced, which would drastically alter the current sex-ed curriculum that is being taught.

Planned Parenthood’s ready-made sex education curriculum just happens to fit the exact requirements HB-1032 would impose on local school districts. The law would forbid any emphasis on abstinence and sexual-risk avoidance as the only foolproof method against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and even declares that saying so in the classroom is against the law. Its materials often promote virtually any type of sexual exploration and experimentation as a “safe and healthy” part of any relationship, no matter the child’s age or biological sex – just as long as you “say yes.”

Our country is in trouble – and Planned Parenthood is a huge part of why humanity, personhood, and the structure of families are being destroyed. Dr. Leana Wen has been doing everything in her power to create a culture around Planned Parenthood where people actually believe that being “pro-choice” is pro-woman, pro-health, and pro-family. She’s been doing everything in her power to remove the “pro-life” label from our movement and replace it with an “anti-abortion” label. Yes, I am anti-abortion – but even more so, I’m pro-life, and I refuse to stand by and do nothing as this all falls into place.

My heart aches for people that believe this to be true. My heart aches for the students that believe the lie that acting on what they’re feeling in the moment will bring them “true” happiness and fulfillment. My heart aches for scared, vulnerable mommas who think that an abortion will make everything in their life go back to normal. My heart aches for the men who are told they have “no say” in what their girlfriends do with their unintended pregnancies, because it’s “her body, her choice,” and are denied the chance at fatherhood. My heart aches for women who are imprisoned in sex slavery, taken to Planned Parenthood to erase the crimes being committed against them, and leave the centers only to be heaved back into a world of abuse. My heart aches for Dr. Leana Wen, because I know that at the end of this life, if she does not repent, she will get a picture of the evil that she’s propelled, the lives that she’s aided in traumatizing, and the families that have crumbled by her endorsement of Planned Parenthood. My heart aches for our country.

The “Rebranding”

Planned Parenthood has begun an effort to “rebrand” themselves under the leadership of Dr. Wen, who took charge in late 2018, as the first doctor to lead the organization in nearly 50 years. Since her arrival, she’s encouraged Planned Parenthood centers to emphasize community health work, in an effort to take the pressure being applied by anti-abortion politicians off of them. In other words, she wants to highlight other services that PP provides and cover the abortion agenda with embellished words and distracting community efforts.

However, she goes on to say that PP will never stop offering abortions (well, at least as long as they are legal), because it’s part of what the organization was founded on. She stated this to Kaiser Health News: “We cannot separate out one of our services. That’s not how medicine works.” While she isn’t abandoning the abortion-related services that have shaped Planned Parenthood’s identity (and their opposition), she is misleading anyone and everyone who will listen to her.
Here’s where I’m putting my foot down.

What Is Medicine?

Google defines medicine as the following: “Medicine encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness.”

The underlined words in the definition above are what medicine is all about. Maintaining health. Restoring health. Preventing illness. Treating illness.

In her statements regarding the rebranding of PP, Wen goes on to say: “Abortion is part of the spectrum of full reproductive health care, and we know reproductive health care is health care. And health care is a human right.”

Dr. Wen, I disagree with you. Abortion procedures are not medicine, at least not according to the dictionary definition, and they certainly aren’t healthcare.

Abortion does not maintain or restore life –for either the mother or the baby. It destroys life – physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Abortion does not prevent or treat illness. Abortion is an elective procedure. There are many arguments surrounding this statement, due to heart-breaking circumstances that occur, such as rape, incest, or a threat to the mother’s health. Less than 1% of abortions have occured because of a mother’s health being at risk – and now women diagnosed with cancer aren’t needing to abort, because doctors have discovered how to implement chemotherapy, so that it does not harm the baby (now, that’s what medicine is all about!). Even if it were necessary to end a baby’s life to save a mother’s – I was gently reminded that with any other “rule” or “law”, you make exceptions to the rule; you don’t make the exception the rule.

They are reframing the narrative from abortion-rights to reproductive health rights, starting from the top of the organization trickling down into all of the clinics because in some way they think that will manipulate people’s minds into thinking that Planned Parenthood has never been about abortion. Wen also comments that her job as a doctor is to listen to her patients and provide them with the care that they want, and that when it comes to abortion: “Abortion is health care. Period… it’s a safe medical procedure.”

The Bottom Line

Planned Parenthood is walking a rather thin, sticky, and faulty line. A doctor’s job is to practice medicine – to maintain and restore health and to treat and prevent illness. Planned Parenthood is not for life. We must call out opponents to our human identity and the sacredness of life for exactly what their agenda is about: politics, power, and profiting from the murder of innocent lives, while covering it with the perversion of words like “women’s rights” and “reproductive health.”

The sad truth is that we live in a world where adopting a life is nearly 40 times more expensive than aborting one. We live in a world where giving birth costs $3,500, while abortion is virtually free in comparison. We live in a world where you can be fined up to $250,000 and face jail time for destroying the egg of a bald eagle, while killing a human baby is not only legal, but it can be done up to birth, simply because you don’t prefer the gender.

At least 24 women have died after taking the abortion pill regimen, RU-486, and many others have experienced serious complications. In the past 26 months alone, there have been 19 documented medical emergencies at the Margaret Sanger Planned Parenthood in NYC (this is representative of 1 Planned Parenthood facility – there are 650 clinics in the United States).

Planned Parenthood: You will never rebrand yourself as a “health care” organization. You will always be about abortion – it’s what you were founded on, and it’s what you’ve built your fortune on.

Abortion. Is. Not. Health. Care. Period.

“We know without a question that babies are babies, inside the womb and out. They don’t become ‘alive’ after they exit their mother. Medical technology proves this preposterous. So, how then is life defined for one who advocates for abortion? A life isn’t a life unless it is self-sufficient? Life is only life when you’re wanted? These fuzzy definitions should frighten us all. If life is only deemed “life” when a congressman wants it to be, our most basic constitutional right is always at risk. The rules of science and logica (that ironically, Christians so often get accused of breaking) are completely disregarded.” -Heather Creekmore, CareNet Writer

*Editor’s Note: Visit ComprehensiveSexualityEducation.Org to view a video that provides details on CSE teaching.

Written by Sammie Gallo, AFL Ministry Coordinator and author of youth curriculum Abundant Life: You Were Made for More.