Women’s lives depend on the ending of others’ lives – at least according to Planned Parenthood’s new campaign.
Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Planned Parenthood Action published a video August 2 promoting the organization’s new “manifesto.” Several actresses, from Elizabeth Banks to Padma Lakshmi, took part in the campaign largely centered on abortion, because it’s “vital for women to live full, healthy lives and plan their futures.”
While conservative, pro-life news outlets have picked up on the abortion giant’s campaign, they haven’t focused on the force Planned Parenthood is harnessing to spread the word: celebrities.
They had some time to prepare; the video is new, but the campaign isn’t. The YouTube film came as a part of Planned Parenthood’s “Unstoppable” campaign that it began publicizing on Independence Day.
“We hold this truth to be self-evident that: Our bodies are our own,” Planned Parenthood Action tweeted July 4. Bodies, minus those of the unborn, that is.
For fellow Americans to participate, Planned Parenthood asked fans to sign a “manifesto” regarding issues like “health care,” “birth control,” “sexual assault,” “economic equality,” “paid family leave,” and “LGBTQ rights.” But the first three appeared to champion abortion:
- “Our bodies are our own.”
- “Everyone deserves health care.”
- “We must have the freedom to decide for ourselves whether and when to have children.”
Those could be pro-life tenets – almost. Unborn babies’ bodies shouldn’t suffer the violence of abortion. They, along with their mothers, should always have access to medical care and support.
But Planned Parenthood means otherwise.
“Access to comprehensive reproductive health care, which includes access to safe, legal, abortion, is vital for women to live full, healthy lives and plan their futures,” the campaign website read, before warning that the “Trump-Pence administration has worked to restrict access to abortion,” and that the “new vacancy on the Supreme Court means that the constitutional right to safe, legal abortion is on the line.”
In support of that, the YouTube video advertised a statistic on screen: “71% of Americans support Roe v. Wade,” the 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion on a federal level in the United States.
That number likely comes from a misleading NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that defined Roe v. Wade as a ruling that “established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.” Besides the charged phrasing, pro-life legal experts criticized the poll for multiple other reasons.
But neither Planned Parenthood nor its celebrity fan base addressed that. Several actresses made appearances to read Planned Parenthood’s manifesto aloud, with a song by Sia playing in the background. The most popular names, listed in the credits, included Elizabeth Banks (The Hunger Games), Mayim Bialik (The Big Bang Theory), Felicity Huffman (Desperate Housewives), Allison Janney (I, Tonya), Padma Lakshmi (Star Trek), Marlee Matlin (Law & Order), and Jessica Williams (The Daily Show).
Others not involved in the video still voiced support on Twitter. Actresses Crystal Reed (Teen Wolf), Rita Moreno (West Side Story), Aisha Tyler (Archer), and Bellamy Young (Scandal) all tweeted the same message: “One of us can be dismissed. Two of us can be ignored. But together, #WeAreUnstoppable.”
Actresses Sophia Bush (One Tree Hill), Aja Naomi King (The Birth of a Nation), and Andrea Navedo (Jane the Virgin), tweeted out similar messages, along with the hashtag #WeAreUnstoppable. Michelle Monaghan (Gone Baby Gone) shared a photo of herself wearing a T-shirt with the word “Unstoppable.”
This isn’t new. As CatholicVote.org has documented in the past, the entertainment world has repeatedly attempted to normalize and popularize Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood easily boasts 100 and more celebrity supporters ready and willing to promote Planned Parenthood campaigns.
At least 20 celebrities, including Charlize Theron, “pinked out” in support Planned Parenthood in 2017. And as Congress considered halting funds for it that same year, 30 celebrities tweeted out a pro-Planned Parenthood message to a combined 120 million followers.
And, for its efforts, Planned Parenthood has recognized celebrities by name in past annual reports, from John Legend to Lena Dunham. But there’s other, more daunting information in Planned Parenthood reports – and it’s why the pro-life movement refuses to bend to what’s considered “popular” by Hollywood.
According to Planned Parenthood’s most recently published annual report for the year 2016-2017, the organization performed 321,384 abortions and received $543.7 million in “government health services, reimbursements & grants.” That means the nation’s largest abortion provider has committed roughly 7.6 million abortions since Roe v. Wade.
But even if that number was one abortion per year, no amount of Hollywood advertising would halt the pro-life movement. That’s because every person, born or unborn, possesses inherent dignity and worth. That’s because women should be supported and empowered so that they never feel that achieving success in their own lives depends on ending another person’s life.
Anything that says otherwise is stoppable.