I hope Planned Parenthood will Change Course

I just got another letter from Planned Parenthood, and I feel horrible (again). I was a regular donor for years. Reproductive rights are super-important, and they are about to tear down Roe v. Wade, and that's terrifying. But Planned Parenthood dropped the ball in a really bad way and they need to fix it before I can trust them with my money again.

Okay, the deal is that in 2015, Planned Parenthood spent my donor money to fight a New Hampshire House Bill 251-FN, sponsored by Bedford, New Hampshire Republican Keith Murphy, to exclude circumcision from the NH Medicare plan at an estimated savings of $212,000 annually. This is not the mission of Planned Parenthood -- they should be opposing genital mutilation and denial of sexual freedom by the state rather the exact opposite.

This is a bad thing and Planned Parenthood needs to apologize for it.

It's also hypocritical, since they, as many medical sources do, deny the existence of the human foreskin in a 2012 video made to teach young people that their bodies are "normal."  They are saying that boys being mutilated, which can result in death and lifetime dysfunction, is "normal." This flies in the face of Planned Parenthood's sexual health and well-being message.

Planned Parenthood's attitude is dismissive of men's health, and surprise, in this case it's very much bad for women's health as well (as it negatively impacts condom usage rates, see below).

It's also dismissive of men's money. I'm a man, and when they lie to me and misappropriate my money in order to undermine my health with lies and the manipulation of the political process, opposing good legislation that's good for men's sexual health, this makes me not want to make donations, not the reverse.

Any woman with any conscious should feel the same. I'm sick of self-described "feminist" organizations making these kinds of self-serving "the ends justify the means" tactics, or taking the stand that "we're the only ones fighting the bad people, even if we're not perfect." No, right is right, and you apologize and change your ways when you do wrong.

One well-known statistic is that the US STD rate is the highest in the developed world. Also, something like 50% of pregnancies are unplanned (Unplanned Parenthood?), also far higher than in other developed countries.

Here's another one: an uncircumcised man wearing a condom has three times the sensitivity of a circumcised man without one. Think of the implications for unplanned pregnancy and STD transmission. American men and women are told that unprotected sex is the ideal, that "riding bareback" is the gold standard to be aiming for.

So, just like in their little video, Planned Parenthood is telling us that unprotected sex is normal, high levels of STDs are normal, and high levels of unplanned pregnancy are normal. Oh, and coincidence, that's where they make their donor money -- fighting the very things that their lopsided, hypocritical polices are promoting.