Commentary by Judie Brown
Across America a new wave of excitement is gripping college towns and the young Americans who inhabit them. Along with possessing the most sophisticated equipment in the classroom, the latest educational tools and the hippest wardrobes, college students are now also privy to any and all sorts of express services. There seems to be no end to the potpourri of efficiency-based businesses designed to make the life of a student as simple as possible. The theory appears to be that if one has to spend less time concerned over minor inconveniences such as, say, dirty clothes or unprotected sex, the more one can concentrate on the really important questions like what to wear to parties or football games.
As callous as this might sound, the fact is that right there on Main Street, just across from campus, students can get a quick bagel sandwich ? or even quicker access to birth control. Planned Parenthood has opened "express clinics" near enough to the campus to provide its uniquely salacious brand of one-stop shopping. While most of their express clinics concentrate on providing everything short of surgical abortion, one cannot overlook the fact that there will be plenty of chemical abortion concoctions on hand for any perceived need, be it a refill for a birth control pill prescription or the Plan B morning-after pills as back-up for "unplanned" experiences the night before.
It's actually enough to make one shudder, particularly when you pay close attention to the reasons some students think these latest Planned Parenthood "services" are the best thing to come along since belly button piercing.
At Brown University, for example, the co-president of Students for Choice told a reporter that there is a stigma attached to seeking birth control at the student health center. "If you go to Health Services," she said, "you'll see people you know there." Apparently that makes this young woman queasy, though not apprehensive enough to refrain from the kind of activity that would make her visit to Planned Parenthood's off-campus site necessary in the first place.
There's also the concern of some students that parents, if they pay your tuition, are able to acquire a copy of your health records. This alone throws a damper on getting birth control on campus. One gets the impression, upon reading such comments, that even though the student in question is fine with having Mom and Dad pay the bills, she is not OK with them knowing that there is more to her student life than participating in chorus or band.
It seems odd to me that we have come to a point in our advanced societal attitudes where parents are viewed as the enemy and people who work or volunteer for organizations like Planned Parenthood are deemed the best thing that ever happened to a girl with a problem. Having sex is now not only acceptable but part of what many coeds anticipate. It seems that far too many college kids have tossed self-respect out the window.
Planned Parenthood is, of course, ecstatic. Over the past half century, this organization has been building this concept of health care. In leaner years, when Planned Parenthood was getting cozy with the old federal Health, Education and Welfare department, things were a bit more private and Planned Parenthood's agenda was seldom touted from the house tops. But that was then, and this is now.
Today the vast majority of Americans don't give a second thought to the idea that college-age young people deserve their privacy, their late night romps and their ready access to every kind of birth control imaginable and, dare I say it, even abortion services. Most parents ? at least from what I have read ? prefer to pay the bill, or arrange for the college loan, and be left to their own lives while their children become experienced adults.
That is precisely what Planned Parenthood is counting on. When you stop and consider that every single college freshman has grown up in a society that accepts killing preborn babies as an integral part of "reproductive choice" ? a society that condones the ready availability of birth control pills and devices that kill these babies prior to implantation, even when the customer is 12 years of age; a society that approves such things with few caveats ? there is little wonder that our college-age population celebrates over-the-counter availability of Plan B and looks forward to the experience that precedes the need for these deadly little pills.
Purity is out; promiscuity is in. Pride in virginity is out; corruption of the body is in. And that is precisely the way Planned Parenthood wants it. You see there is no hope of Planned Parenthood increasing its income if all these young people choose to wait until marriage. There is no way to build a customer base if the choice is made to abstain from sex. The more that young people perceive sexual encounters as a normal rite of passage into adulthood, the better it is for the evil beast that is Planned Parenthood.
We are told that this latest addition to Planned Parenthood's panoply of "services" is designed to make students more comfortable about their choices. What we are not told is that there is always a price to pay when moral decisions are based on the comfort level of the one making the choice. Be that as it may, the truth is that the beast is never satisfied.
For some years now Planned Parenthood has told America that in matters sexual, children should have the right to be free of parental involvement. Judges have ruled that if a child is old enough to engage in such activity, then that child is old enough to choose what to do about the consequences. In the process, a devastating level of desensitization has occurred, resulting in increased disrespect for the value of the preborn child.
The beast still is not satisfied. As more babies die, whether by chemical, device or instrument, and more young people fall victim to all manner of sexually transmitted disease, cancers that kill and heart problems that result in strokes, the beast salivates. When will this grisly monster ever be satiated? The answer is never.
That is precisely why people like you and I must demand that the government get out of the business of facilitating the destruction of the innocent. Far too many lives have already been lost; far too many souls have already been damned.
If we fail the beast's appetite will continue to grow. There will never be enough dead to quench its desire for blood.
Release issued: 21 Sept 06