FORT WORTH, Texas — A professing Christian university in Texas is under fire after it became known that the abortion giant Planned Parenthood was among the locations where students could receive credits for internships.
Texas Christian University’s history department recently sent an email notifying history majors that “Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas is looking for a volunteer historian to develop a project highlighting its history in Fort Worth.”
“TCU students could take this on as a research project or a class, or they could receive three credits of HIST 30073, Internship in Public History,” the email read. “The PP office would like as a final project a 5-10 minute visual presentation of its history to present to other groups and organizations in Fort Worth.”
The internship would include browsing photographs and scrapbooks, and “interviewing local families who have long been involved in support of PP.”
“Planned Parenthood welcomes opportunities to engage with students across the community and is currently planning oral history interviews with advocates who helped advance the rights of women in Tarrant County to make personal, private healthcare decisions and expand access to high quality healthcare and education to everyone,” Sarah Wheat, chief external affairs officer at Planned Parenthood, said in a statement about the matter.
However, the development caused alarm among pro-life organizations.
“It is a disgrace for a large Christian university to offer credit for an internship at the largest abortion provider in the nation,” Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said in a statement.
“Instead of educating and equipping students on how to persuasively discuss the pro-life viewpoint and help women in crisis, they instead reward students for spending valuable time volunteering for an organization that ends the lives of over 325,000 innocent human beings a year,” she said.
A number of alumni also took to social media to express concern.
“I am ashamed and embarrassed that my university TCU is providing opportunities to intern with Planned Parenthood, a known abortion provider founded by a racist that believed in racist theories like Eugenics,” wrote Matthew Roberts. “Please change this shameful and dishonorable practice within the history department.”
While university officials declined to speak in detail about the internship, they did release a statement in light of the controversy, remarking that the offering of an internship doesn’t equal support for an organization.
“Texas Christian University strives to provide diverse learning opportunities for students to effectively prepare them for the global community,” the statement read, according to the Star-Telegram. “The university offers many internships in any given semester, and does not support political or personal statements associated with any of them.”
Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas was a part of the undercover investigation conducted by the Center for Medical Progress.
As previously reported, last October, the Center released footage of its conversation with abortionist Amna Dermish, as she laughed about how obtaining an intact baby head would be “something to strive for,” and explained how she performs breech or partial birth abortions to harvest the child’s organs.
“I haven’t been able to do that yet—the intact calvarium,” Dermish says in the video.
“It’s like, well, maybe next time, right?” the undercover investigator asks.
“Well, this will give me something to strive for,” Dermish responds, laughing.
Dermish also explains that one of her workers is interested in organ donation and likes to look for the various body parts following the abortion procedure.
“[S]he’ll pull out kidneys and heart, and heart we usually see at nine weeks and she always looks for it,” she says.
“Just like for fun,” the investigator says.
“Well, it’s cute. It’s cute,” the co-worker replies.
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