According to the head of America’s largest abortion provider, women understand Planned Parenthood. But she’s forgetting a few numbers in her calculation.
On Sept. 25, Comedian Larry Wilmore invited Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, on his podcast show, Black on Air. During the friendly interview, Richards claimed “most women” understood her organization and went on to say of Ivanka Trump, “I don’t know what she’s doing.”
After discussing her upbringing, Wilmore asked about Richards' current position heading Planned Parenthood.
“There’s very few organizations like Planned Parenthood that literally, not only has been around 100 years long before even birth control was legal, but has literally changed lives and does every day,” she began.
It also ends lives. But they didn’t address that. Instead Wilmore asked her for the “most misunderstood part of Planned Parenthood.”
According to Richards, misunderstanding her organization was a male problem.
“I actually think that, for most women, they do understand Planned Parenthood. So I’m just going to say that right now,” she insisted. “Most of the people who actually mischaracterized Planned Parenthood have never had to worry about being pregnant or worry about, you know, having breast cancer or needed a pap smear.”
Speaking of “most women,” a January Marist poll found that most women support abortion restrictions. Not to mention women lead the pro-life movement. There’s Marjorie Dannenfelser of Susan B. Anthony List, Catherine Glenn Foster of Americans United for Life, Arina Grossu of Family Research Council, Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life, Jeanne Mancini of March for Life, Penny Young Nance of Concerned Women for America, Lila Rose of Live Action. The list goes on.
To “explain to male politicians” that “all this matters,” Richards said she presented them with numbers.
“So the average woman in this country who wants to have kids spends five years getting pregnant and having children and an average of 30 years trying not to get pregnant,” she said. “Okay, that’s what we do at Planned Parenthood, is we help for those 30 years.” (It certainly doesn’t seem to care about the five years.)
According to Wilmore, both sides are “mixed up” about the “whole issue of abortion.”
“I feel the pro-choice position is actually a very conservative position and the pro-life position actually is a very progressive, liberal position,” he said. “People just don’t know it.”
He elaborated on his argument.
“If you’re for a woman’s ability to have liberty about her body, like, if you say, ‘Government, leave that woman alone, she can make her own choices,’ that’s actually a very conservative position, you know?” he continued. “If you say, ‘Well, we want to protect some being that can’t be protected, we want the government to step in,’ that’s actually a very liberal position.”
The difference is that many liberal progressives don’t see the unborn person as a human being. Conservatives do – and want the government to leave the baby alone.
Wilmore concluded, “That’s why I think politics should be taken out of this issue.” But he himself began focusing on exactly that: politics.
Wilmore wanted to know if Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion in the United States, could be overturned in the Trump administration.
“It absolutely could be,” Richards warned.
But both Wilmore and Richards admitted they were “confused” by the president’s stance on Planned Parenthood. Wilmore took the opportunity to call Trump a “narcissistic sociopath” and “just an asshole.”
He also asked Richards about her meeting with Ivanka Trump earlier this year about Planned Parenthood discontinuing abortion.
“If she’s in charge of advancing opportunities for women, I don’t know what she’s doing,” Richards slammed.
Richard’s stressed that Trump’s daughter was also the “highest ranking woman in the White House.” Though minutes later, she criticized, “You look at this administration, and their appointments? No women.”
According to Planned Parenthood’s most recently published annual report, the organization performed 328,348 abortions and received $554.6 million in “government health services grants and reimbursements” for the year 2015 – 2016.
