Planned Parenthood doesn't want my stinkin' help.

[Geoff]

I see no point in debating with someone who equates "legal" to " moral and ethical".

[Warren Dew]

It makes one fuck-load of money providing abortions.

Planned Parenthood provides most of their services for free or below cost. If they are making loads of money doing that, I'd like to know their business model so I can emulate it.

[Warren Dew]

And he's only one of many vigilante lunatics who think it's okay to kill people because they are somehow connected to providing abortions-- because, in their view, abortions kill people, and killing people is wrong. So let's kill the people who kill people-- sounds rational, right?

Unfortunately, lots of people think two wrongs make a right.

Oh, and, (1) thanks for being responsible enough to wait until you could support a child to have one, and (2) congratulations!

[Svartalf]

How disappointing.

Ayaan is right, don't judge the entire organization on this experience. I might consider writing a letter to the director of that PP and/or to the larger organization about this unprofessional treatment. There is no excuse for treating volunteer applicants this way. I think they would be interested to hear about it since the woman who interviewed you is a paid position...they do work hard on maintaining a positive image, and she's not helping it.

Thing is, after a recent case where "reporters" (well, that's yellow journalism at best, yet...) posed as a pimp and his teenage whore until they got counseling about birth control and abortion etc

This makes we wonder about the amount of worm in that apple not being large enough to put the whole org at need of cleaning house.

[Warren Dew]

Thing is, after a recent case where "reporters" (well, that's yellow journalism at best, yet...) posed as a pimp and his teenage whore until they got counseling about birth control and abortion etc

This makes we wonder about the amount of worm in that apple not being large enough to put the whole org at need of cleaning house.

I think people are drawing bogus parallels with the ACORN video.

In the case of the ACORN video, the ACORN employees were actually providing advice on how to do illegal things.

In the case of the Planned Parenthood videos, the Planned Parenthood employee was only pointing out how the organization could legally help people, while trying to avoid supporting anything illegal.

Giving money to a drunk to get a meal, even if you suspect he might be violating vagrancy laws, is not at all the same thing as telling him how to rob a store.

[sandinista]

I see no point in debating with someone who equates "legal" to " moral and ethical".

Aint that the truth.

[Seth]

Seth wrote: Since that's not possible, the alternative I think is to REQUIRE PP to sterilize any woman who has an abortion, since clearly that woman has decided that her happiness and convenience is more important than another living human being, and thus should not be allowed to ever have children.

The same woman who wouldn't have made a good mother at 16 and chose to have an abortion might make an excellent mother at 25. The woman who couldn't support a child, or who had health concerns that contra-indicated pregnancy at 28 might not have the same constraints at 32.

Tough shit. Some decisions are irrevocable. Certainly the decision to terminate the child's life is irrevocable, so why shouldn't the consequences for the mother be just as irrevocable? That's a great way to reduce the number of abortions: One to a customer, and if you have one, you're never allowed to have children. Now decide, based on that requirement, whether having sex is worth the risk.

This is the cognitive disconnect that is most often ignored in this debate; women and men are not compelled to have sex. It's a voluntary act, and sexual urges can be successfully resisted. Chastity, abstinence and monogamy are all viable lifestyles that are both moral and ethical and do not result in having to kill the innocent products of sexual promiscuity. Planned Parenthood and indeed the entire Women's Lib movement encourages promiscuity, and thereby promotes sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy, by telling young girls that it's okay for them to succumb to their sexual urges because there's always that ultimate backstop of abortion out there to save them from their misbehavior.

The instance of teenage pregnancy skyrocketed after the Pill was introduced in the 60s because it was viewed by young women as license to indulge their sexual urges that they had previously resisted because of the risks of pregnancy. It continued to skyrocket until AIDS came on the scene. When that happened, the risk/reward ratio was once again tilted away from promiscuous sex and towards abstinence, chastity and monogamy, and teenage pregnancy rates dropped again.

In Uganda, the Catholic-supported programs teaching abstinence, chastity and monogamy, combined with governmental distribution of condoms, successfully reduced the rate of HIV/AIDS in Uganda to about five percent, as compared with typical rates of 15 percent or more in other African countries.

There is nothing inherently wrong with engaging in sex for pleasure, but ethically, one should be prepared to accept without complaint the natural consequences of such activity, just as one freely and without complaint accepts the risks and consequences of any risky activity, from motorcycle racing to skydiving. What irks me is the specious assumption that there is a personal right of consequence-free sexual pleasure that society is obliged to support and facilitate. I do not believe this is the case. Certainly one has a right to pursue personal pleasure as a right, but that does not mean that society is obliged to relieve anyone who chooses to pursue pleasure, in whatever form, from the consequences of that pursuit.

I no more accept the necessity of society to provide or even approve the use of abortion as a "lifesaving" device, particularly at public expense, than I accept the notion that society is obliged to erect safety nets and fences at every cliff on the planet to prevent people from suffering the consequences of selfish stupidity when they jump from the cliff.

Saying that abortion is a "right," which implies that society is obliged to provide for the availability and legality of abortion is just as vacuous and idiotic as saying that parachutes or seat belts are a "right" and that the rest of us have to protect the idiots who choose to jump from airplanes from the consequences of terminal velocity at impact on the public's dime.

It's exceedingly simple: If you don't want to risk becoming a parent, wank. Or get sterilized.

But don't expect sympathy from me if you decide to have sex, protected or otherwise, and get pregnant, because that's as much a natural risk you should be aware of and must accept as death is if you jump out of an airplane, even with a parachute. And don't expect society to support your desire to have abortion as a last resort avoidance of parenthood.

Suck it up and have the baby and give it up for adoption if you must.

[Seth]

Seth wrote: Did you know that one of the reasons your birth control might have failed is that PP might be deliberately dispensing specific brands of contraceptives that are more likely to fail than other, better brands? There are allegations that the organization deliberately dispenses oral birth control pills that must be taken exactly on schedule, and that have a significantly higher failure rate if they are not taken at the same time each day and that PP knows this and dispenses these specific drugs rather than more "forgiving" brands to young women who are unlikely to be rigorous about taking their pills correctly? This would comport with PP's "give them an abortion no matter what" business plan, because they don't make as much money distributing contraceptives as they do providing abortions.

Seth, all bc pills work better if they're taken at the same time each day. The Ortho-tricyclen 1-35 that I got as a clinic pack from PP was the same medicine I used to get from my family GP when I was in my teens.

As for the supposed "fuckload of money" PP makes from abortions-- the money they make is used to defray the costs of the services and medicines they provide, often at below-market-level prices or for free.

And pay the salaries of employees, and the exorbitant salaries of the managers of the organization, and to expand their Margaret Sanger-approved practice of sub-rosa racial genocide in the black community. "Non profit" doesn't mean nobody profits from the abortion industry, not even a little.

[Seth]

I see no point in debating with someone who equates "legal" to " moral and ethical".

Aint that the truth.

Then feel free to carry on with fucking off elsewhere...with my blessings.

[Seth]

Seth wrote: how sad that you feel this way about children. Interestingly, I used to feel much the same way, back when I was young and stupid. I thought kids were a nuisance and could see no point in anyone having one, and that abortion on demand was a great idea.

Then I grew up and became an adult, dispelled my gross ignorance, suppressed my atavistic selfishness and took the time to actually discover the great joy of children. There is nothing quite as rewarding as watching a toddler, beginning at about 18 months, truly begin to learn and explore and speak.

The joy of being around them is inexpressible to someone who is as selfish and self-centered as one who kills their own child out of a misguided and atavistic sense of bloated self-worth and narrow-minded greed and selfishness rather than buck up and accept personal responsibility for her actions. Personally, I use great care in controlling where my semen is deposited so that I can live an ethical and moral life and do not have to bear the moral burden of creating a new life that can be snuffed out without my participation or permission.

So apparently you haven't overcome your own atavistic selfishness and had some children of your own.

Choosing not to have children is not atavistic selfishness. Killing a child to suit one's atavistic selfishness and narcissistic desire for personal freedom is.

And however involved you may be in your nephews' and nieces' lives, being an uncle is not the same as being a parent.

True. But I made that decision a long time ago, in part to avoid passing on genetically-based defects, which I consider to be an ethical thing to do. But I also didn't kill anyone in the process of not having children, which is an important distinction. This cannot be said of a woman who has an abortion. Instead, I dedicated myself to assisting in the raising of my nephews, both financially and physically. Do you have a problem with that?

[Seth]

It makes one fuck-load of money providing abortions.

Planned Parenthood provides most of their services for free or below cost. If they are making loads of money doing that, I'd like to know their business model so I can emulate it.

Offer to kill babies for a small amount of money, and locate your abortion clinic in poor minority neighborhoods, black neighborhoods in particular, and you can make a fucking fortune murdering children, as the PA abortionist did, and as I'm sure many other abortionists are doing right now. Planned Parenthood is hardly the only malefactor in that regard.

[Seth]

Thing is, after a recent case where "reporters" (well, that's yellow journalism at best, yet...) posed as a pimp and his teenage whore until they got counseling about birth control and abortion etc

This makes we wonder about the amount of worm in that apple not being large enough to put the whole org at need of cleaning house.

I think people are drawing bogus parallels with the ACORN video.

In the case of the ACORN video, the ACORN employees were actually providing advice on how to do illegal things.

In the case of the Planned Parenthood videos, the Planned Parenthood employee was only pointing out how the organization could legally help people, while trying to avoid supporting anything illegal.

Giving money to a drunk to get a meal, even if you suspect he might be violating vagrancy laws, is not at all the same thing as telling him how to rob a store.

Nonsense. If you examine the evidence, you will discover that PP workers were doing the same sort of thing that ACORN was; they give pimps and underage victims of rape and incest explicit instructions on how to evade the law, and they explicitly tell them NOT to tell the PP anything that would require PP to report the situation. This is blatant evasion of both the spirit and letter of the law, as one can see in some of the videos where the undercover agent (Lila Rose), posing as a pregnant 14 year old TELLS the clinic worker that the father of the child is over the statutory rape age, and the clinic worker says "I didn't hear that," when plainly she did hear it and was therefore obligated to report the event even if she did not provide services to the girl. That's rather the whole point. It's called "conspiracy," which is a crime.

[maiforpeace]

You're kidding, Seth, Youtube videos? I smell people like James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles behind those.

So what? The videos speak for themselves. They didn't force the ACORN workers or the PP workers to incriminate themselves and give advice on how to defraud the government and violate the law. O'Keefe and Giles have done this country a great service by exposing rampant corruption and illegal activities in liberal organizations that are defrauding the taxpayers.

Given how many enemies Planned Parenthood has, you can't provide one instance of actual criminal wrongdoing that has been prosecuted?

It's very difficult to prosecute PP for criminal acts when the criminal acts are carefully concealed by PP and the victim both. The whole point of the undercover videos is to rip the cloak away from the organization and reveal its corruption. PP consistently throws any employee who is exposed expounding PP true positions under the bus, claiming that it was the employee who was at fault, and it takes great care NOT to leave documentary evidence of it's criminal acts by, as can be seen in the videos, telling underage girls who have been raped by adults not to tell PP the age of the sex partner precisely so that they can have plausible deniability. Young girls seeking an abortion don't want to risk not getting the abortion, and they do as they are told, but the evidence is clear that in numerous cases PP knows full well that the child is having sex with an adult, but fails to report it. Eventually PP will get prosecuted, just as the abortion doctor Dr. Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia, who is accused of killing babies after delivery, and four of his clinic workers, have been arrested. Such things take time, but the PP criminality is beginning to unravel thanks to the undercover videos.

And while it is not illegal to advise pimps how to get abortions and medical services for their underage imported sex slaves, an ethical organization would immediately report the instance to the police and would cooperate fully with the police in investigating the individuals involved in order to track them down and put them out of business. There is NO evidence that PP has ever reported such instances to the police or cooperated with the police in freeing young sex slaves from their bondage. It may be presumed, however, that PP has done the opposite, and has facilitated child sex slavery by providing services to pimps and underage prostitutes without making the required police reports and without taking any action to free the children from their plight.

Certainly that deserves to be known by the public, so that the public can decide if federal funds should continue to flow to the organization, and whether or not the public should continue to support such corruption and greed.

As a teenager, I first went to Planned Parenthood to get birth control. Then later on when that birth control failed, I received an abortion from them. (or, as you might put it Seth, became a bady killer)

Did you know that one of the reasons your birth control might have failed is that PP might be deliberately dispensing specific brands of contraceptives that are more likely to fail than other, better brands? There are allegations that the organization deliberately dispenses oral birth control pills that must be taken exactly on schedule, and that have a significantly higher failure rate if they are not taken at the same time each day and that PP knows this and dispenses these specific drugs rather than more "forgiving" brands to young women who are unlikely to be rigorous about taking their pills correctly? This would comport with PP's "give them an abortion no matter what" business plan, because they don't make as much money distributing contraceptives as they do providing abortions.

Without the help of Planned Parenthood, I can't imagine what my life would have been like if I had been forced to keep that child.

You would have been a mother, like billions of women before you. In all likelihood you would have found that being a mother is a mixture of reward and sacrifice, but in the end, if you settle to the task and just do it, is, in the end, more reward than sacrifice. This seems to be the majority experience, as demonstrated by the continued existence of the human race.

Planned Parenthood gave me my life back, and added to the quality of it immeasurably. They get a nice donation from me every year.

Not all of us are built to care for, or pay for the care of six brats (ugh, what a nightmare!), much less one of them.

How sad that you feel this way about children. Interestingly, I used to feel much the same way, back when I was young and stupid. I thought kids were a nuisance and could see no point in anyone having one, and that abortion on demand was a great idea.

Then I grew up and became an adult, dispelled my gross ignorance, suppressed my atavistic selfishness and took the time to actually discover the great joy of children. There is nothing quite as rewarding as watching a toddler, beginning at about 18 months, truly begin to learn and explore and speak.

The joy of being around them is inexpressible to someone who is as selfish and self-centered as one who kills their own child out of a misguided and atavistic sense of bloated self-worth and narrow-minded greed and selfishness rather than buck up and accept personal responsibility for her actions. Personally, I use great care in controlling where my semen is deposited so that I can live an ethical and moral life and do not have to bear the moral burden of creating a new life that can be snuffed out without my participation or permission. I expect and demand no less from women. Hedonistic pleasure is not a moral justification for careless sexual behavior that leads to the killing of a child out of convenience and selfish personal pleasure. Sex should never be undertaken without due regard for the risks and potential consequences, and a willingness on both parties part to accept and live with those consequences rather than killing a resulting child, should one's contraceptive precautions fail. Abortion should never be a last resort for failed contraception, it should ONLY be permitted if the woman has been raped, or if the child is FATALLY deformed. Otherwise, women and men both should act like rational human beings and accept the consequences of their actions and get on with being good parents. You play, you pay, and you don't get do-overs. If you don't want to chance being a parent, then don't have sex. It's just that simple.

It is probably better that deranged and delusional people who use abortion as birth control aren't allowed to have kids, it's true, because they turn out to be horrible parents who abuse their children and do things like leave a two year old and an 8 month old alone in a bathtub, where the two-year-old accidentally turns on the hot water, gets out of the tub and leaves the 8 month old to die of scalding and drowning while "mom" steps out to buy some cigarettes and beer.

Yes, preventing such narcissistic morons from having children from having children is a good idea, and I'd happily fund a No Parenthood clinic where such women, and men, would receive mandatory sterilization. But it would be best if it were done before they needed an abortion. Since that's not possible, the alternative I think is to REQUIRE PP to sterilize any woman who has an abortion, since clearly that woman has decided that her happiness and convenience is more important than another living human being, and thus should not be allowed to ever have children.

Requiring Planned Parenthood to change its name to No Parenthood would at least be truth in advertising.

That work for you?

That was really entertaining, Seth, thank you. Now that I know what you think of me I would expect you wouldn't bother to reply to any of my future posts. I can honestly say I have never known someone as full of it as you. I'm so glad I lead such a sheltered life.

[Gallstones]

Seth.


Remembering what you said about what you do and why you do it.
You're in good form in this thread.

I'm glad to think that you might not really believe most of what you've said here.
Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Seth]

That was really entertaining, Seth, thank you. Now that I know what you think of me I would expect you wouldn't bother to reply to any of my future posts. I can honestly say I have never known someone as full of it as you. I'm so glad I lead such a sheltered life.

Hm. I apologize. Upon re-reading my post, I note that I had intended my statement to be abstract, but I note that it was improperly constructed and can be seen as being directed at you personally. That was not what I intended, and I'll repair it if I can. I try not to personalize philosophical debates like this, since they are so very emotional and personal, and I truly do apologize for offending you, it was not my intention.