WASHINGTON — Over a dozen Democratic senators have proposed a resolution in celebration of the 100th year of the birth control and abortion giant Planned Parenthood, stating that the organization is an “essential thread in the fabric of society,” in part by helping to grow the economy by keeping women in the workforce instead of raising their children.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon announced the introduction of the resolution on Thursday, which was co-sponsored by Al Franken of Minnesota, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Barbara Boxer of California, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Dick Durbin of Illinois, among others.
“From Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine, this country is healthier because of Planned Parenthood,” Wyden said in a statement. “My Democratic colleagues and I are going to keep working to make sure this bedrock health provider can keep serving people for the next 100 years.”
The resolution asserts that birth control and abortion have made women’s lives better.
“[O]ver the past 100 years, gains in access to birth control, safe and legal abortion, and other reproductive health services have improved and transformed the lives of women, men, and young people in the United States and around the world,” it reads in part.
It also contends that these services have helped to grow the economy by keeping women in the workplace instead of being mothers.
“[B]reakthroughs in women’s health care, such as the legalization and expanded availability of birth control, have been named one of the biggest economic advancements for women in the past 100 years,” the resolution reads. “[C]hanges in women’s access to reproductive health care have led to cultural shifts: in the United States, women are now nearly half the workforce, the sole or primary breadwinners in 40 percent of homes, and more than half of the college students.”
It applauds Planned Parenthood for playing “important roles in increasing access to safe and legal abortion,” and advocating for “measures that increase access to birth control.” The resolution also recognizes the organization for being the “largest provider of sex education in the United States.”
The proposal therefore declares that Planned Parenthood should consequently “not be defunded, attacked, or discriminated against for their role as a vital women’s health care provider across the country, and affirms that Planned Parenthood remains an essential thread in the fabric of society, and it will be key in the next century to assisting millions of women, men, and young people in accessing the health care they need and deserve, no matter who they are or where they live.”
Read the proposed resolution in full here.
As previously reported, Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, and was originally known as the American Birth Control League. She later changed the name as some found it offensive.
Sanger was also the publisher of the newspaper “The Woman Rebel,” which she subtitled “No Gods, no masters.” In a 1914 edition she wrote, “Birth control appeals to the advanced radical because it is calculated to undermine the authority of the Christian churches. I look forward to seeing humanity free someday of the tyranny of Christianity, no less than capitalism.”
Sanger, who was a staunch advocate of eugenics, also wrote in “The Pivot of Civilization,” “Constructive” eugenics … shows us that we are paying for and even submitting to the dictates of an ever increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all—that the wealth of individuals and of states is being diverted from the development and the progress of human expression and civilization.”
“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives,” she also wrote in “Woman and the New Race. “If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.”
Planned Parenthood outlined in its annual report released at the end of December that the organization performed 323,999 abortions nationwide during the 2014-2015 fiscal year. The organization received $553 million in taxpayer funding/grants in 2014, up from $528 million the year prior, which equated to 43 percent of its total income. $48 million of Planned Parenthood’s income was used for sex education, and $39 million was used for public policy, or to influence state and federal law, up from $33 million in 2013.
Despite its expenditures, it still garnered a $61 million dollar profit.
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