While we know that Planned Parenthood’s operational focus is on promoting its cash cow of abortion over against actually encouraging women to have their baby, a slip of the tongue today on NPR News shows what they really think of all those unplanned pregnancies.
In a story by Julie Rovner about the cost of contraception for low-income women and whether the government ought to be funding it, Planned Parenthood’s senior director for medical services, Deborah Nucatola, made the following statement:
“Half of all pregnancies that happen in the U.S. every year are unintended. And if we could prevent an epidemic of this proportion, that should be justification enough that contraception is preventive care.” [emphasis added]
For Planned Parenthood, pregnancy is an epidemic that only the government can cure through increased funding for contraception as preventative care. Let’s first ignore the obvious fact that an epidemic is when the spread of a disease substantially exceeds what we expect based upon past experience. Frankly, unplanned pregnancies have been with us since the beginning of time and will continue until the world ends. This is nothing new.
While unintended pregnancies may be…well, unintended, they certainly shouldn’t be unexpected. There is, after all, only one way that unintended pregnancies occur and (except in cases of rape and incest) there is a choice that can be made beforehand that can and often does result in pregnancy.
And, like a surprise gift, while pregnancies may sometimes be unexpected, that does not mean they are unwelcome. For most people, the surprise of a pregnancy becomes the delightful anticipation of a glorious event. And for those young women who need assistance to prepare for the unexpected, pregnancy care centers and organizations of all kinds exist just to help welcome a life into the world.
Planned Parenthood would have you believe that such pregnancies are a terrible event that demands the government spend untold sums of cash (directed to their facilities) in order for it to stop. And, of course, when those remedies fail, Planned Parenthood believes that you and I should then spend again to cure the “epidemic” through abortion.
Equating pregnancy to a disease ravaging the countryside, targeting unsuspecting citizens, and bringing about terrible consequences is to undermine the demands that real disease puts on our government.
In the same NPR story, Andrea Leyva of Tucson, Arizona refers to Alexandria, her unplanned child, as a “blessed surprise.” In countless other situations across the country, women refer to their unintended pregnancy in exactly the same way. That’s hardly a comment people make about any other “epidemic” in need of a cure.