Part of Planned Parenthood’s business model relies on investing in youth, according to its president. But she’s only counting those already born in her equation.
On Monday, business magazine Fast Company shared “three tactics” the president of the nation’s largest abortion provider employs to run her organization.
Among other things, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards revealed what makes for a good leader – something she says she learned from her mother, former Texas governor Ann Richards.
To be a good leader, she said, “means investing in the folks who are coming up after you.”
“At Planned Parenthood, we invest in thousands of young people by getting them trained to be public speakers and advocates,” Richards said. “That is probably the most important mark I hope to leave on Planned Parenthood: having a whole new generation of leaders come after.”
But here’s the real legacy Richards will be remembered for: Halting a new generation. In its most recently published annual report, Planned Parenthood revealed that it performed 321,384 abortions from 2016 to 2017. According to that report and previous ones (plus numbers by pro-life groups), Planned Parenthood has demolished more than 7.6 million babies since Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in this country.
That’s not investing in the country’s youth. That’s robbing them of their lives.
While Richards values the youth already born, other women’s testimonies tell a different story: That investing in unborn babies, even those conceived in horrific circumstances like rape, can enrich the world.
The same day that Richard’s interview was published, pro-life group Live Action released a powerful video of one woman detailing how she became pregnant after rape.
A working mom of four, Jennifer Christie was on a business trip in 2014 when she encountered a violent rapist.
“I went back to the hotel and it was snowy,” she remembered. “I made it to my room and, you know, opened the door and dropped all my stuff inside and turned around to close the door, and there was a man in the doorway.”
While working as an interpreter on a cruise five weeks later, she became sick and discovered she was pregnant. An ultrasound confirmed it: “There was a little – little pea,” she said, “and that little pea was my son.”
But her first reaction wasn’t to run and hide.
“I feel like the world would be telling me, you’re pregnant from something horrible. You should be angry and disgusted,” she said. “And I felt this rush of fierce protectiveness over this baby.”
With her husband’s support, she decided, “we can do this.” They kept the baby.
“My story is not one about choice,” Christie stressed. “I’m not telling my story to say ‘look, this is the choice that I made.’”
Instead, she urged, she wanted to “emphasize the humanity of my son.”
“He’s a reminder that God is still on the throne. And that good still wins out over evil,” she continued. “In the grand scheme of things, when you look back and you think of the things that you’d like to take out of your life, I couldn’t ever take back what happened to me because it would mean not having him.”
“He’s worth it,” she concluded. She doesn’t regret investing in her son’s life – despite the cost.
Christie first shared her story in 2014 via Save the 1, a group that represents those conceived in rape as well as those who refused abortion after rape.
“Our little boy may have been conceived in violence, but he is a gift from God,” Christie added. “We are survivors. Not victims. My son has healed me.”
Planned Parenthood pushes past stories like Christie’s that challenge its agenda to protect the unborn.
“Who knows what it’s going to take to change the direction of this country?” Richards said at one point in her interview. “It’s going to be everybody doing their part.”
But that can only happen if “everybody” is allowed to live.