Obama Cheers Planned Parenthood, Including Abortion Services

When President Obama spoke to the 1,200 attendees of the 2013 annual Planned Parenthood Gala several weeks ago, he praised the organization's many services to women's health, including the providing of abortions.

While Planned Parenthood is an especially well-known provider of abortion referrals and in some cases, actual abortions, termination of pregnancy is not an especially large part of the organization's activities. As the President noted in his speech given at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C., 

After applause, the President continued, "And for many, Planned Parenthood is their primary source of health care  -- not just for contraceptive care, but for lifesaving preventive care, like cancer screenings and health counseling."

Planned Parenthood Isn't Just About Women's Health

In fact, Planned Parenthood also provides services for men's sexual health.

In addition to abortion services, Planned Parenthood provides access to the basic medications for contraception, including morning-after contraception after rape and unplanned sexual intercourse. It offers information on how to make sure that vasectomy actually prevents pregnancy. It encourages mothers of newborns to nurse their infants for at least six months--offering about 95% protection against another pregnancy even when no other forms of contraception are used. It even offers information about abstinence and the rhythm method.

But Probably Nothing Planned Parenthood Does Will Please the American Christian Right

In short, Planned Parenthood provides all the services a large segment of the Christian right of the United States hates, and very little else (namely, abstinence and possibly "fertility awareness" methods of family planning, such as the rhythm method). Not just abortion but also contraception are opposed by the Roman Catholic Church and some "Bible churches." The very idea that someone might consider having a sexual orientation other than heterosexual or sexual intercourse outside of marriage sanctioned by a church is anathema. 

The fact that Planned Parenthood also offers

can never offset the fact that it offers reproductive services. But what is it that the President was actually saying?

What Does It Mean Really To Be "For" Abortion?

I used to think no one was really "for abortion," in the sense that, I assumed no one could possibly believe an abortion is a good thing. It might be sometimes necessary, but it couldn't possibly be desirable, I thought.

I turned out to be wrong about that. Not about whether abortion is a good thing, but whether someone might think it is.

Visiting a Unitarian Universalist Church in Austin, Texas, I sat through the valedictory sermon of a student minister, a woman in her 30's. This minister told the church that she had had two abortions. Her first abortion, she said, was a "right of passage," just something every woman should do. But when she had a her second abortion, a few weeks before her sermon, she experienced it as a "celebration of her right to choice as a woman."

I nearly got up and walked out. But realizing that my indignant exit might actually encourage her, I simply left the "service" after she and the senior minister had finished speaking and vowed not to return.

I contrast this attitude with the point of view of my own mother. My mother lost two children before I was born, experienced complications early in her pregnancy with me, and was ordered by her doctor to abort me. What I know now, and my mother never knew in her lifetime, is that she had a hereditary blood clotting disorder that made carrying a child to term very difficult. She took to bed and I popped out a few months later. Had my mother not exercised her choice to defy her "pro-abortion" doctor I would not be around to write this article.

There isn't any evidence that President Obama is "for" abortion in the same way that this Unitarian Universalist minister was "for" abortion. But there are certain themes regarding women's choice that are consistent in the President's speeches.

"When it comes to a woman's health, no politician should have the right to choose for you."

The President has been particularly critical of a law enacted in South Dakota that bans abortion if a fetal heartbeat can be detected, sometimes as soon as six weeks after conception, and an Arkansas law that bans most abortions after the twelfth week. The President has spoken against an attempt to ban all abortions rejected by Mississippi voters in 2011.

"You've got a President who's going to be right here fighting with you every step of the way."

Before 2012, many state and local Planned Parenthood organizations received part of their fundings from state tax dollars. In some states, notably Texas, Planned Parenthood was cut off from any funding because of it provided abortion counseling along with other women's services. Under existing law, since federal funding was offered as a match to state funding, when the state cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, funding from the federal government was cut off, too. State funding of abortions was eliminated, but Planned Parenthood was forced to close many of its offices completely, also eliminating the access of some women to contraception and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. In Texas, $1.5 million per year spent on providing abortions was eliminated in 2011, but the state wound up budgeting $247 million for other women's health services through different providers in 2013.

My personal view?

Both men and women need to have personal control over their role in reproduction--without contempt for human life, like the "minister" in my story above. Banning abortions won't stop women from having them, but planning pregnancy is always better than terminating it.