She is new on the job and still getting familiar with the billion dollar abortion conglomerate. That, or newly minted Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen is being purposely misleading.
Pushed to respond to criticisms of the organization she now leads, Wen was either confused during an interview on “The View” or purposely conflated things to defend the indefensible. “Healthcare shouldn’t be political,” she said with a straight face. “Needing medications for your children isn’t political — getting breast and cancer screenings.”
Except, no. Not at all.
Planned Parenthood is quite political and by their own design. They have armies of lobbyists and lawyers and public relations professionals to prevent regulation and to protect their federal funding ($1.5 billion taxpayer dollars went to the organization between 2013 and 2015). They also have a super PAC, and it is a political juggernaut.
Planned Parenthood Action Fund has spent millions lobbying, litigating and campaigning since 1989. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, they spent $985,619 lobbying Capitol Hill in 2016 (down from $1.3 million the year before). They also gave $897,115 to candidates running for federal office that year on top of another $2,953,768 they funneled to dark money outside groups.
And that was just at the federal level. Planned Parenthood Action Fund vertically integrates with 58 incorporated chapters in 41 different states.
If a congressman or a state representative so much as even thinks about introducing legislation that, say, requires an abortionist to have admitting privileges at the local hospital, Planned Parenthood Action Fund launches a coordinated assault. A huge chunk of their funding comes from government and so a huge chunk of their resources are dedicated to influencing politics.
But Planned Parenthood doesn’t just react to legislation. They put the legislators in office.
This year, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Planned Parenthood Votes launched a $20 million initiative called “March. Vote. Win.” The stated goal is “to build robust TV, digital, and mail programs to tap into the millions of grassroots supporters that took action last year and turn their support into victories at the ballot box.”
They regularly endorse candidates up and down the ballot, which turns out to be an almost exclusively Democratic group. Planned Parenthood endorsed Barack Obama in 2008 and then again in 2012 for president. They were so eager to see Hillary Clinton in the White House, the organization endorsed her during the middle of the Democratic primary.
This is why I don’t believe Wen and I don’t care for her line about the supposed apolitical nature of abortion. Planned Parenthood replaced a political knife fighter, Cecile Richards, with an emergency physician, Wen. The leader has changed, and so has the talking points. The infrastructure of the leviathan remains the same, and it is very much political — whether Wen will admit it or not.
