People Magazine’s newly-published profile on Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards is so glowing it reads as though the nonprofit’s public relations team drafted it themselves.
The 59-year-old abortion activist is descrbed as “a marathon-running, passionately committed dynamo” with a penchant for baking homemade pies. Any attempt to mask the writer’s transparent bias was either half-hearted or historically-botched — the article is actually titled, “Planned Parenthood’s Wonder Woman: Cecile Richards Is Fighting to Save Health Care for Millions – and Makes a Mean Cherry Pie.”
That’s one way to put it.
“Today she rallies millions around a healthcare vote as smoothly as she recently organized a party for 100 — complete with Velveeta queso dip and margaritas — while vacationing in Maine,” the profile explains.
No mention of the 328,348 abortion procedures Planned Parenthood carried out under Richards’ leadership last year, according to its own annual report. No mention of her orgainzation’s history with eugenics at its founding. In fact, there was no mention of anything at all that might reflect negatively on Richards (save for one positively-framed mention of her own decision to have an abortion), who’s a controversial figure outside of People Magazine’s New York headquarters.
No, People wanted readers of its profile to think of Richards as a political Wonder Woman, one who bakes pies and runs marathons, pouring herself into the work of providing millions of women with medical care as easily as she pours herself a margarita in Maine.
Why mention the 328,348 abortions when pie is just that much more interesting to us silly, single-minded female readers?
Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
