By James Wilson
How does an organization whose original purpose was ridding the culture of undesirable minorities become teflon coated in the racially conscious twenty-first century? The most effective way would be to create an unholy alliance with big media. Planned Parenthood has done just that. The time to unravel this alliance is now.
Let the revelation come first. Despite the worst blizzard to hit Washington in decades the March for life 20016 went joyfully forward; instead of hundreds of thousands there were tens of thousands and photos bear this out. The New York Times reported mere hundreds of marchers. When The Daily Caller (a conservative web site) pointedly asked the writer for the Times if he had attended the march or written his story sight unseen he refused to answer. His bureau chief stood by the lowball count when even the Washington Post reported a tenfold increase. Who benefits from such blatantly incompetent reporting? Planned Parenthood and the abortion lobby would be the beneficiaries.
This same New York Times admitted they were wrong to claim the videos showing Planned Parenthood profiting from sales of baby body parts were edited; they were not, but the admission came only after sixteen days of Times stonewalling. Who is gifted with the stonewalling? Planned Parenthood.
The three major television networks devoted nine and one half minutes to the birth of a panda bear cub at the Washington Zoo and mere seconds to the March for Life. TV did not devote enough time to the event to misrepresent its size. Yet with polls consistently showing Americans more pro life, who benefits from burying massive events like the March? Planned Parenthood gets the nod again.
The Supreme Court heard arguments March 3 for on the Texas law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Planned Parenthood admits more than two hundred Texas women are hospitalized annually for complications from abortion. They acknowledge ten women weekly – more than five hundred annually – go to emergency rooms. Should Texas win this case before SCOTUS it will be the first time in more than two decades restrictions have stood against unlimited abortion. More than forty-five hundred women have signed declarations regarding their injuries from abortions in this case. Yet the mainstream media have been largely silent other than the occasional crawl on Fox News. Who benefits?
Last but not least is the mysterious study published in the New England Journal of Medicine February 3, 2016. The Dallas Morning News and the LA Times report the study shows damage to Texas women because contraceptive claims have dropped and Medicaid births are up in Texas since the state excluded Planned Parenthood from its healthcare program in 2011. Trouble is – and media fails to mention – it is only claims for injectable contraceptives (a small subset) that dropped in Texas. There is no data on other contraceptives or unintended births in general. Medicaid births did rise for this subset, but by an experimentally unimportant 7%; they did not increase overall.
Clearly the New York Times added fantasy to the study. They cited George Washington University Law Professor Sara Rosenbaum as authority that unintended pregnancies increased in Texas. In fact Rosenbaum predicted they would increase; no one has documented they did increase. Equally clear is the poor credibility of The New England Journal of Medicine. During the 2010 debate over Obamacare the Journal claimed Romneycare caused abortions to drop in Massachusetts. They did drop, but abortions are dropping all over the nation for over a decade. Once again, who benefits from distorting the pro life facts? You guessed it, Planned Parenthood.
There is a lot of back-scratching between the abortion juggernaut and mainstream media. What ought ordinary people do?
One thing is to depend on multiple information sources; sifting and sorting is a good thing and a responsibility for people who would be free; it is a special responsibility for Christians serving a Lord Who for freedom set us free, per Galatians 5:1. Another is to speak of what we gather through any means available from social media to back fences to break rooms; this too is specially incumbent on Christians whose Lord said what we hear whispered is to be shouted from rooftops per Luke 12. And last but surely not least – for Christians at least – is to repent before God and our neighbors for a history of complicity in the very evils we decry. Our sacred book is shot through and through with such admonishments, but the good news – if we take the Gospels seriously – is that His strength is perfected in our weakness the moment we acknowledge our weakness.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living As Ambassadors of Relationships, The Holy Spirit and the End Times, and Kingdom in Pursuit – available at local bookstores or by e-mailing him at praynorthstate@charter.net
