September 6, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Conservative commentators had dubbed this week’s abortion-focused Democratic National Convention “abortion-palooza” even before delegates heard from the United States’ “queen” of abortion – Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.
In her speech to the Convention Wednesday night Richards, whose organization is the number one perpetrator of abortion in the country, never mentioned the procedure by name. But her message was clear: Obama will do whatever it takes to protect abortion rights, while Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are anathema.
“It’s like we woke up in a bad episode of Mad Men,” she said about the Romney/Ryan team, lambasting in particular Romney’s pledge to work to defund her organization, which receives hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars every year, and to work to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“[W]hen Mitt Romney says he’ll ‘get rid of’ Planned Parenthood, and turn the clock back on a century of progress, it has real consequences for the three million patients who depended on Planned Parenthood last year,” she said.
Instead of focusing on the economy, charged Richards, Republicans elected in 2010, “came after women’s health. And they haven’t let up since.”
“This year women learned that if we aren’t at the table, we’re on the menu.”
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Richards accused the GOP of having “voted to end cancer screenings” and of seeking to “end access to birth control,” the latter charge an apparent reference to Republican opposition to the HHS mandate, which requires that employers pay for their employees’ birth control.
In a rebuff to conservative activists who have criticized Planned Parenthood for not offering any meaningful breast cancer screening beyond the rudimentary manual exams that women can perform on themselves at home, Richards touted the story of Brandi McCay, whose cancer she says was caught at a Planned Parenthood facility. “She is now cancer-free,” said Richards.
After the pro-life organization Live Action exposed the fact that Planned Parenthood does not in fact offer the “mammograms” that its supporters have often praised it for, the organization went into damage control mode, announcing a $3 million cancer screening program. Critics of the effort, however, have pointed out that the funds set aside for the initiative amount to a fraction of one percent of the organization’s billion-dollar-plus budget.
Obama, on the other hand, continued Richards, “understands women. He trusts women. And on every issue that matters to us, he stands with women.”
She concluded: “As women, we’ve come too far to turn back. And we won’t. … So, this November, we’re going to keep moving forward, and we are going to re-elect President Obama.”
Earlier in the week another top pro-abortion figurehead, NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan, had addressed the Convention, while even First Lady Michelle Obama slipped in several pointed references to “choice” in her speech Tuesday evening. The Convention was also host to a Planned Parenthood rally, and another event hosted by Catholics for Choice.
Richards’ speech was followed shortly after by an address from Sandra Fluke, the law student at Georgetown University who shot to national prominence after complaining that her Catholic university did not cover the cost of birth control.
The Democratic party platform unveiled this week endorses abortion-on-demand and government funding for the deadly procedure.
Meanwhile, even some liberal commentators have begun to question the Convention’s heavy emphasis on extreme liberal social policies like abortion and gay “marriage.”
Melinda Henneberger of The Washington Post told The Daily Caller, “I have NEVER heard this much about abortion as in that hall last night, even if you throw in every homily of my life. Every other event is sponsored by [Planned Parenthood] or EMILY’s List.”