Planned Parenthood Carries On
Wednesday - January 17, 2007
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Del.icio.usChristian Coalition founder and 1988 presidential aspirant Pat Robertson said that Planned Parenthood “is teaching kids to fornicate, teaching people to have adultery, every kind of bestiality, homosexuality, lesbianism - everything that the Bible condemns.”
You can get an argument on when Planned Parenthood started, but my money’s on 1940 when Margaret Sanger’s friends (birth control advocates) and enemies (eugenicists mostly worried about too many poor, blacks and immigrants washing over America) buried the hatchet under the Birth Control League banner to become PP a year later.
Planned Parenthood of Hawaii has its banquet and fundraiser this Friday, and if you’ve followed the news you know that all’s not been well for the birth-control community.
The primary reason is that word abortion. About 10 percent of Planned Parenthood’s yearly clients nationally come in for an abortion.
PP’s mission statement says “reasonable people everywhere agree that no woman should be forced to bear children; no family should be threatened with economic ruin as a result of unintended pregnancy; and no person should ignore the consequences of unwanted pregnancies.”
Fundamental Christians are not “reasonable” about abortion. They want PP’s abortion clinics put out of business. The more radical objectors have bombed them and shot staff members.
Even the late Mother Teresa said at her Nobel Peace Prize acceptance that “the greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.”
Then there are some local issues. About eight years ago, the Hawaii affiliate of PP got into a beef with Planned Parenthood of America and lost its right to use the PP trademark. So it became the Family Planning Centers of Hawaii. The split cost the local clinics some donations and a known place in the phone book.
In 2001, things got patched up. So it’s Planned Parenthood of Hawaii once more.
Hawaii’s a mellow, liberal place (despite the local GOP flirtation with Pat Robertson 18 years ago) and so the abortion part of PP’s business here has never been a red-flag issue.
Fact is most of PP’s work deals with family planning, gyneco-logical care, sexually transmitted disease testing and treatment, pregnancy testing and teen counseling.
No, you won’t see the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Honolulu at the Friday gathering. There will be a sprinkling of top politicians and a full house.
With a national annual revenue of $810 million, and $265 million of that coming from government grants and contracts, PP is obviously not going away.
Note to Mayor Hannemann: I just went through that humbug known as driver’s license renewal. I don’t know if your license will expire during your term, you’ll go through the full process or just have someone run the paperwork through the back door.
But I feel sure that what I write here reflects the sentiment of most Oahu drivers.
There were six windows for applicants; at times four of them staffed, and just two or three at other times. A staffed section for taxi licenses had only one customer the hour-plus I was there. But it remained staffed and not open to us.
Old drivers on canes and young drivers dragging young children joined me in the long line and wait at 9:45 a.m. You wait to get the clearance, then you wait for the cashier, then you wait for the picture taker, then you wait for the completed license.
Look, if something as critical as a passport can be renewed by downloading forms on the Internet or picking them up at a post office and sending them in with the old passport, a new photo and a check, why not an Oahu driver’s license?
There’s no longer a written test for renewals. The eye test? Come on, we both know that’s a joke and you have to be blind before you’re denied.
So if your Consumer Services director can’t dream up a less time-consuming method, maybe you need to find a new director.
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