Liberal Journalist Baffled by 'Antipathy' Toward Nation's Largest Abortion Chain

Janet Pearson's recent Tulsa World column ('Family planning leader sees hopeful signs but concerns linger') "displays either a calculated effort to veil the truth or a stunning inability to see the obvious," writes Randall K. O’Bannon.

Pearson spends about a thousand words detailing Planned Parenthood’s woes and wondering why the once popular group has since become “a frequent target” (Tulsa World, 7/1/12). There is much talk of “family planning,” “reproductive health,” and “reproductive rights,” and some discussion of sex education, personhood laws, and congressional efforts, supported by pro-life GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, to defund the organization. But after all these detours off the main road, Pearson never gets back on the freeway to answer why the “antipathy” towards PPFA?

Could it be, just possibly be, that people have a problem with supporting a $1 billion dollar a year organization that performs about 330,000 abortion a year, making it the nation’s largest abortion chain and responsible for more than one out of every four abortions performed in the United States? You’d never know it by Pearson’s account. The word "abortion" doesn’t even show up until the 16th paragraph -- and just that once, in a passing reference to a few court decisions related to Oklahoma laws.

The choice to portray June and PPH as the sympathetic hero/martyr strains all credulity. PPH is Planned Parenthood’s ever-growing behemoth Midwestern affiliate with (as Pearson points out) "31 health centers in Iowa, Nebraska, Arkansas, and Oklahoma."

It is the same affiliate that in its earlier incarnation participated in the trials of RU486, the abortion pill. And it is the same Jill June that reported to the press that testing had ended in Iowa with no complications among the 238 women who participated in the trial.

When a doctor came forward to say that he had needed to perform emergency surgery to save the life of a woman who lost half her blood volume during her abortion, June told the media that “no complications” referred to the trial, that the trial was conducted successfully -- and not to the conditions of the woman (Waterloo Courier, 9/24/95, Des Moines Register, 9/21/95). Get it? The "trial" did just fine, the woman who lost half her blood, not so much.

PPH has rightly received increasing attention of late for two reasons in particular. With five recent mergers, it has gobbled up four weaker affiliates. In addition, PPH has launched the notorious web-cam abortion procedure in which the abortionist is never in the same room as the mother who is about to abort.

PPH began by offering this to many of its smaller Iowa clinics. Now it has offered web-cam abortions as a model for other Planned Parenthood affiliates and other "family planning" clinics that desire to expand their abortion offerings to more remote, and more minimally staffed facilities. It is a way to exponentially expand the number of abortion clinics, and hence abortions, in the U.S., and, potentially, in other parts of the world.

This is the same PPH that has recently built a large abortion clinic in Lincoln and announced plans to open a dozen more "health centers" in Iowa and Nebraska.

In lamenting other pro-life initiatives which, Pearson says, "have real consequences that hurt real people," she ignores the pain and hurt suffered by "real people" at Planned Parenthood clinics such as the unborn child and the mothers scarred for life by the horrors of abortion.

CEO Jill June tells Pearson that money spent on "family planning" [that is, money going to groups like hers] is "a smart thing to do economically" and "a smart thing to do to alleviate human suffering." If June and Planned Parenthood really want to alleviate human suffering, they should stop performing and promoting the destruction of human beings at their clinics -- thousands at PPH and millions at Planned Parenthood nationwide. That’s the reason for the "antipathy" towards Planned Parenthood and its mission.

Rather than worrying about antipathy towards people who snuff out babies, liberal journalists might be better served worrying about the antipathy of their customers.

UPDATE: Using Planned Parenthood's own numbers, Dr. Gerard Nadal shows the ever-increasing number of abortions it performs: