Planned Parenthood, propaganda and RU-486

Got this in the mail from Planned Parenthood yesterday. You may be wondering why I get mail from PPFA. I'm wondering too. I also get mail from the ACLU.

I always read it to see what's going on with them, then write my answers to their points with a Sharpie and put it in the postage paid envelope to send it back to them. I figure that way they'll lose a little extra money each time they send me something.

Then it occurred to me that you all might like to know what they're up to too.

This particular mailing is for the "Fill My Pills Now" campaign. The enclosed letter, claiming some pharmacists will not fill prescriptions for birth control pills, states:

Wives, mothers, and single women are seeking the advice of their doctors, making private medical decisions, and then encountering pharmacists at their local drugstore who think they know better - and who deny women their prescription medicines.

These pharmacists – emboldened by religious extremists and empowered by arch-conservatives in Washington, D.C. and around the nation – are no longer content to live their own lives as they choose.

Now they are trying to tell you and me how to live our lives. And too often they succeed. This has got to stop. (my religious extremist emphasis)

Barbara Curtis, Member – Planned Parenthood Federation of America (!!!!!!!!!!!)

Although I was an abortion rights crusader in the 60’s and 70’s, I don’t remember joining PPFA. But of course I was also a crazy drug addict at the time, so that explains why I can’t remember ever joining. On March 21, 1987 I became a believer and having understood that I was special in God’s eyes, immediately understood the sanctity of life.

So I’m wondering: if someone who’s been ardently, outspokenly pro-life for 19 years and who’s moved six times since then is still considered a member of PPFA – how could we possibly take seriously their membership claims?

But the larger issue here is the propaganda technique known as Card Stacking or Selective Omission – in which to achieve the desired result an important piece of information is left out.

One might ask why – since birth control pill prescriptions have been being faithfully filled by pharmacists for over 40 years – why, all of a sudden, have they become such an earthshaking problem?

I can imagine many women getting this inflammatory mailing and indignantly and obediently signing their Letters of Objection without ever understanding the real issue and the true intent of Planned Parenthood.

Because the issue here is not about birth control pills, but a certain pill Planned Parenthood lumps together with “normal” birth control pills – just as they lump partial birth abortions with “normal” abortions (and please understand where I’m coming from, which is that none of these things are “normal.”)

What they are raising money for here is to strong-arm all pharmacies and pharmacists into dispensing what is known as the morning-after pill – which is taken up to 72 hours after intercourse "just in case" - and prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg. Some pharmacists have ethical problems with dispensing abortifacients, but Planned Parenthood thinks they should be forced to. Pharmacists are concerned that this is just the beginning of the incremental process which will eventually have them also dispensing RU-486, mifepristone, which even the neutral Wikipedia defines as being used “for the termination of pregnancies less than sixty-four days from conception.” (Wikipedia’s full description, here – outlining history, deaths, and controversy.)

Sixty-four days! That’s just over nine weeks. But even with the morning-after pill currently in dispute, we’re not talking about a birth-control pill, but a drug that induces abortion.

So my take is this: Hooray for Wal-Mart, Winn-Dixie, and Target for refusing to be party to abortions (and some of that may just be good business sense since they could eventaully be sued in event of deaths, which are documented here) http://www.lifeissues.org/ru486/deaths.htm

And shame on Planned Parenthood for using cheap propaganda tricks to accomplish their pro-death agenda!