THE RYAN REPORT

PP abortion mill opens in Madison, Wisconsin

Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin opened a new $1.9 million abortuary in Madison, Wisconsin on January 8, 2004, as a new place for abortionist Dennis Christensen to kill innocent children. In its lobby is what Planned Parenthood calls a “Wall of Honor,” dedicated to former and deceased abortionist Liz Karlin and displaying the names of financial donors.

"This so-called ‘Wall of Honor’ should truly be dubbed a ‘Wall of Shame,’" said Peggy Hamill, Pro-Life Wisconsin’s state director. "The physical and mental destruction wrought by abortion is anything but honorable; it is a pox on the community that needs to be eradicated."

Prior to the grand opening, Pro-Life Wisconsin, an American Life League associate, announced its plans to peacefully and prayerfully protest at the new mill the day it offered a public open house. STOPP received a report on the protest from attendee Jeanne Breunig. She said about 20 people showed up to protest and that Catholics in the group prayed the Rosary. Several signs were brought, including one by Dave and Peggy KonKol which was a very long scroll with 11,130 baby footprints representing the babies killed by abortion in Wisconsin in 2002. Jeanne also picked up a pre-printed “Open House” sign from a hardware store and added, under those words, “Killing Center.”

In September 2003, STOPP was asked to give advice in a conference call to pro-lifers in the Madison area who were organizing to oppose this new killing center. STOPP invited John O’Neill, the leader of a successful campaign that resulted in the bulldozing of a new PP abortuary in Monrovia, California, to participate as well. John and STOPP’s national director, Ed Szymkowiak, shared tactics that had worked elsewhere with the Madison pro-lifers. (For more on the story in Monrovia see the May 2003 issue of the Ryan Report.)

Later, the pro-lifers formed a group called Greater Madison Against Planned Parenthood (GMAPP) with Greg Wagner as its leader. GMAPP purchased a year lease on a huge billboard facing the new Madison PP abortuary. Just before the opening, a message was placed upon the billboard featuring a picture of actress Jennifer O'Neill saying that she regrets her abortion. The billboard is from the Silent No More campaign for which Jennifer O’Neill is the national spokesperson. The billboard featured a help line as well (1-800-395-HELP). This is the first of several messages Jeanne indicated would be on the billboard in the future. Pro-lifers are planning to be at the site daily from 9:30 to 10:30 am to pray and sidewalk counsel. STOPP supporters in the region are urged to join in and to keep GMAPP’s efforts in their prayers.

See also the coverage in the 1/9/04 Wisconsin State Journal.

PP offers “free condom” clinic for teens in Puyallup, Wash. amid protests

Planned Parenthood of Western Washington has created a new “teen clinic” offering drop-in hours in Puyallup, Wash. according to a 1/2/04 Tacoma News Tribune story. The clinic aims to educate teens about topics including birth control, sexually transmitted diseases and emergency contraception and will offer free condoms in the lobby. Young volunteers will work with PP to spread the word about the new services.

PP opened a $1.4 million facility in Puyallup about a year ago, but the “teen clinic” at this facility just began recently. PP indicated that the Puyallup center participates in a federal/state program that provides free services for low-income people. Entitled, "Take Charge," the program is open to those who earn less than about $1,500 a month. PP noted that this qualifies most teenagers.

Puyallup Coalition for Life, a network of pro-life citizens, announced a 3-hour protest of the January 8 grand opening of the new teen clinic consisting of peaceful prayer and sign holding. Hans Zeiger, a spokesman for the Puyallup Coalition for Life, pointed out that Planned Parenthood encourages sexual irresponsibility and abortion. “Planned Parenthood has chosen to exploit the sexuality of teenagers by drawing them in to the clinic, offering them condoms and other birth control, and telling them that it’s okay to have promiscuous sex that may result in their return to Planned Parenthood for an abortion.”

Puyallup Coalition for Life has held weekly vigils outside of the Puyallup Planned Parenthood, located at 702 30th Ave SW, since the clinic opened in December 2002. The coalition also protested at the groundbreaking and grand opening of Puyallup Planned Parenthood last year. According to Zeiger, the protesting is “…an exercise of our First Amendment right to stand on a public sidewalk and demonstrate outside of Planned Parenthood.”

STOPP congratulates Puyallup Coalition for Life for taking a stand against PP and urges readers to pray that PP will soon shut down this shameful teen clinic in Puyallup.

Maker of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda now a boycott target

According to Life Decisions International, Church & Dwight, Inc., became a contributor to Planned Parenthood and is therefore now a boycott target. Church & Dwight makes Arm & Hammer baking soda, various oral care products and many other products listed on its web site. Church & Dwight also provides the Trojan brand condom.

American Life League's Dentists for Life and American Life League's STOPP International are urging pro-lifers to join the protest and to write Church & Dwight to complain and ask that it cease funding Planned Parenthood. Contact:

Mr. Robert A Davies III, President & CEO
Church & Dwight Co., Inc.
469 North Harrison Ave.
Princeton, NJ 08543-5297

Behind every choice is a story: How Planned Parenthood helped kill my baby
By Becky Yant

In the winter of 1978, I was 18 years old and living with my grandmother, because my mother didn’t really want me living with her. I was raised the “old fashioned” way, to do what you’re told whether you like it or not. Well, I usually did, but I didn’t in one area. I finally found someone who I thought “loved” me and was convinced sex was the way to be loved. After three years I became pregnant. I tried to ignore the fact that I could be. So I put off facing this for over two months. Finally when talking to my mother one day, she knew something was wrong and I told her I was afraid of being pregnant. By the way, I was also raised not to say the word “pregnant.” Mother went ballistic. So worried about what people would think. She told me, “Give me time and I’ll find out what we can do about this.” She asked someone where she worked and they immediately told her of Planned Parenthood. Mother made an appointment with them for me. I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen. My boyfriend and I planned on being married anyway, so this was going to speed it up a bit, as far as I was concerned.

When we went to Planned Parenthood, Mother and I were called back to some cold office. The lady asked me what made me think I was pregnant. I told her I missed two periods and about to be three. She immediately had a test ran on me to confirm this. She came back and told me I was pregnant and again Mother was irate. The lady sat down and told me, there are options. She said, “You can have this,” and Mother immediately said, “No!” The woman said she understood how Mother felt. She did not even argue with her! She said, “You can have it and give it away.” Mother said, “No!” Again the woman said she completely understood. She then proceeded to tell us that I could have an abortion. I was stunned! Appalled! I was thinking, “No!” She told Mother of two doctors in a nearby city that would do this but only on a cash basis. She encouraged Mother. Then she stopped and asked me how far along did I think I was again. I told her over 2 months. She said, “No problem.” The woman made me an appointment and gave us directions. She had absolutely no remorse on her face. She talked about it as if the baby were an “it”… a mere mistake, but one I could throw away. She reassured Mother that it was relatively easy and no big deal to it. They talked around me as if I weren’t there for the most part. We were dismissed as quick as we went in. Like we were a number. I told Mother I didn’t want this, but she told me to shut up.

The day came for the abortion to be performed. Mother was so cold and cruel. She got the $250.00 together and let me know I had to repay it a.s.a.p. I was taken back to a very cold room that seemed to be only metal. I was given something to make me dilate. I had to wait an hour so Mother took me shopping. After the hour was up we returned and I was strapped on a table…arms and feet. They gave me an IV to put me to sleep. After a few minutes I could tell I was becoming drowsy, but not asleep. They proceeded to work on me and I could hear them and see them and feel pain. Then they had some piece of equipment that sounded just like a vacuum cleaner and inserted it and began to literally suck the baby out. The sound was horrific. It was like chunks of something falling into a bucket. It hurt, and I was dying inside. I could see some, I could hear it completely, and could say nothing. They were laughing and talking as if it were nothing. Then I heard them say something about a boy, so I suppose I would have had a baby boy. After they finished they let me recover a short time then sent me home…like a cow ran through the slaughter.

Mother couldn’t let me go home too early or my grandmother would find out what I had done, so to make it look as if I worked that day, Mother and my sister took me shopping in a mall for 2 hours. I thought I was going to bleed to death and almost passed out many times, but only got fussed at. She promised she wouldn’t tell my grandmother, but she did. My grandmother never acknowledged it happened though. You see, I loved my grandmother as if she were my mother. I didn’t want to hurt her.

Friends, this was the most horrible moment in my whole life. To literally hear and feel a life being sucked out of you is a nightmare no one should ever go through. Planned Parenthood made this possible. They are the ones who didn’t argue with Mother. They set this up gladly. Murder. I have dealt with being guilty of murder for 25 years, and it’s like nobody cares…beginning with Planned Parenthood.

I beg everyone reading this to spread the word and help save a little baby’s life, that God created. Please tell anyone you meet what Planned Parenthood does to young girls. They not only kill babies, they assist in ladies being tormented beyond description, and could care less.

New book, War Against the Weak, exposes PP’s founder

Edwin Black's new book, War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003), includes a full chapter focused on the role Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, played in the early 20th century American eugenics movement. It was a movement which Black shows preceded, inspired and greatly influenced the horrific application of eugenic principles in Nazi Germany. While this is not a book devoted exclusively to Sanger, it does a good job of exposing her evil contributions in the context of the movement as a whole in an intensely researched and well-documented format. Two of Black's previous books also involved issues related to Nazi Germany.

The real value of this book, for the pro-life movement, may well be that it is written by someone who is obviously not a pro-lifer. Thus, it will be hard for the secular media and the pro-abortion movement to dismiss the findings, some of which are quoted below. Indeed, in the introduction Black makes it clear that he thinks eugenics contaminated the birth control movement, which he characterizes as “otherwise worthy” (p. xvi). Planned Parenthood even worked with Black, “closely day after day,” providing him with documents (p. xxiv). Finally, Black knows that the truth he writes about Sanger is potentially useful to pro-lifers and he attempts to wash his hands of such use by writing, “Opponents of a woman's right to choose could easily seize upon Margaret Sanger's eugenic rhetoric to discredit the admirable work of Planned Parenthood today; I oppose such misuse” (p. xxiv).

In the context of such protestations, Black's expose of Sanger becomes even more valuable to the pro-life movement. On page 127, Black writes the following summary of Sanger's dark philosophy of birth control.

Sanger was an ardent, self-confessed eugenicist, and she would turn her otherwise noble birth control organizations into a tool for eugenics, which advocated for mass sterilization of so-called defectives,9 mass incarceration of the unfit10 and draconian immigration restrictions.11 Like other staunch eugenicists, Sanger vigorously opposed charitable efforts to uplift the downtrodden and deprived, and argued extensively that it was better that the cold and hungry be left without help, so that the eugenically superior strains could multiply without competition from “the unfit.”12 She repeatedly referred to the lower classes and the unfit as “human waste” not worthy of assistance, and proudly quoted the extreme eugenic view that human “weeds” should be “exterminated.”13 Moreover, for both political and genuine ideological reasons, Sanger associated closely with some of America's most fanatical eugenic racists.14 Both through her publication, Birth Control Review, and her public oratory, Sanger helped legitimize and widen the appeal of eugenic pseudoscience.15 Indeed, to many, birth control was just another form of eugenics

Later, on page 135, Black writes the following. “Therefore, even though Sanger was not a racist or an anti-Semite herself, she openly welcomed the worst elements of both into the birth control movement. This provided legitimacy and greater currency for a eugenics movement that thrived by subverting progressive platforms to achieve its goals of Nordic racial superiority and ethnic banishment for everyone else.”

As damning as Black's War Against the Weak is for Sanger, Black leaves out any mention of Sanger's well documented Negro Project and her racially inflammatory statement in a December 10, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble about the project, "We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten that idea out if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members." (See Donovan, Charles and Marshall, Robert, Blessed Are The Barren The Social Policy of Planned Parenthood, (Ignatius Press, 1991), pages 17-18.). The Negro Project was designed by Sanger and Gamble to use contraception to cut down on the number of black babies being born. Perhaps Black left out mention of the Negro Project and this famous Sanger quote because it is not easy to reconcile these with his claim, and that of Planned Parenthood today as well, that Sanger was not a racist.

In any case, even many Sanger supporters will acknowledge that she was a leading eugenicist. As Black traces the influence the American eugenics movement had on Nazi thinking and policies, one comes to the conclusion that being a eugenicist is just as bad as being a racist or an anti-Semite. While these are distinct evils to some extent, historically they have overlapped in many ways. While Black does not specifically link Sanger to Hitler in any direct way, he certainly links the American eugenics movement as a whole to Hitler, writing the following about Hitler on pages 259-260: “He would duplicate the American eugenic program - both in that which was legislated and that which was only brashly advocated - and his group would consistently point to the United States as setting the precedents for Germany's actions.” Indeed, Black names many other Americans as complicit in the eugenics movement besides Sanger, but there is no denying that Sanger was a key player in what was an international war on the weak.

Several of Black's latter chapters focus upon the atrocities committed by the Nazis in places such as Buchenwald and Auschwitz to drive home his point. On page 318, he says, “For decades, Hitler's bloody regime, the Holocaust and the Second World War would be perceived as merely the outgrowth of the unfathomable madness and blind hatred of one man and his movement. But in fact Hitler's hatred was not blind; it was sharply focused on an obsessive eugenic vision. The war against the weak had graduated from America's slogans, index cards and surgical blades to Nazi decrees, ghettos and gas chambers.” The “index cards” were those used by the American eugenicists to trace family bloodlines and the “surgical blades” were those wielded by American doctors to sterilize an estimated 70,000 Americans (p. 398), a practice legitimized by various American state laws, and even upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court in 1927 in Buck vs. Bell.

After World War II, the Treaty Against Genocide took aim at eugenic policies formulated to destroy any national, ethnic, racial or religious group. But, shockingly, as Black relates on page 409, “For three - perhaps four - decades after the Treaty Against Genocide was adopted, the United States continued to sterilize targeted groups because of their eugenic or racial character, real or supposed; continued to prevent marriages because of their eugenic or racial character, real or supposed; and continued to hamper reproduction, interfere with procreation, and prevent births in targeted groups. After Hitler's regime, after the Nuremberg Trials, some twenty thousand Americans were eugenically sterilized by states and untold others by federal programs on Indian reservations and in U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico.”

As good as Black's book is in exposing Sanger and the eugenics movement as a whole, he misses the mark when it comes to Planned Parenthood today. He fails to recognize that although, as he notes on page 426, Planned Parenthood now promotes birth control for everyone, it still makes an extra effort to provide such services to the poor via such things as government subsidized programs and sliding fees scales. Sanger and other eugenicists included the poor on their list of those they felt genetically inferior and not worthy of reproducing. Whether or not the motivation for Planned Parenthood's birth control services to the poor today rests upon its eugenic legacy or not, the net effect is still, to some extent, the same.

Given Planned Parenthood's radical eugenic legacy, how can anyone be sure that its current efforts to promote birth control nationally and internationally to the poor are completely devoid of all eugenic motivation? Black shows just how deep seated eugenic thought was in 20th century America, and just how deeply involved Planned Parenthood's founder was in eugenics. Does anyone expect us to believe that all such eugenic thought has disappeared in America and that Planned Parenthood has completely purged its ranks of such thinkers? If that is so, why, when governors of five U.S. states apologized recently (since 2002) for the role their states had in the American eugenics movement, did Planned Parenthood not follow suit with a similar public apology regarding its own founder? Instead, Planned Parenthood continues to honor its eugenicist founder. In 2003, Planned Parenthood Federation of America gave Jane Fonda what it called its “highest honor” in its 2002-2003 Annual Report, the PPFA Margaret Sanger Award.

Finally, even if Planned Parenthood is not today waging exactly the same type of war against the weak that its founder did, it certainly is waging a war against the weak when it comes to the defenseless innocent babies it exterminates yearly at its abortion mills. The total killed since 1977 is over 3 million. Black can see the evil in previous generations when it comes to eugenics, but his characterization of Planned Parenthood's work today as “admirable” obviously shows that he is blinded to the evil in his own time and to the atrocious holocaust of the unborn being waged today by an organization formed by one of the key architects of the very war against the weak he documents in his book.

School nurse reassigned after allowing PP sex ed talk

A Florida school nurse has been reassigned elsewhere after she invited Planned Parenthood of the Palm Beaches and Treasure Coast to conduct a sex-education discussion for about 40 seventh graders at a middle school in Lantana, Florida.

Channel 5 News in West Palm Beach apparently broke the story in November 2003. On November 12, 2003, the Ft. Lauderdale Sun Sentinel reported that as part of the discussion the children filled in a survey that asked sexually provocative questions, including what activities they would perform with people in various stages of a relationship. A second group of students was scheduled for a PP presentation as well but an unnamed teacher informed principal Ann Clark of its contents and it was cancelled.

In this school, parents are supposed to sign permission slips before their children may receive sex education. Fred Barch, who oversees such education in the school district, said the presentation was inappropriate for the age group and that he didn’t know why the nurse invited Planned Parenthood. He said, “I believe this is an isolated incident,” adding, “I hope people don’t think this takes place in all the schools.”

School district spokesman Nat Harrington indicated back in November that the school district might ask the health care district of Palm Beach County, which provides school nurses, to remove the nurse involved from Lantana Middle. He also indicated that school officials were considering a policy that would require principals to approve outside agencies whose representatives speak in schools.

In an effort to follow up on the results of this controversy, STOPP International contacted Harrington on January 9, 2004. He said that the nurse involved has agreed mutually with the school and the health care district that she be given another assignment, but Harrington stressed that this reassignment should not be viewed as a punishment. He also indicated that no new formal policy has been made regarding such matters by the school, but noted that such matters should be brought to the principal’s attention based upon prior practice.

STOPP thanks God for the unnamed teacher who exposed PP’s filthy sex education and got it canceled before it harmed even more children than it did. Parents are urged to keep a close eye on the education their children are receiving and to root out any objectionable sex education, be it by Planned Parenthood or anyone else. The book Parent Power! by STOPP’s founder, Jim Sedlak, will guide you through this effort. It is available online or can be ordered by calling 866-LET-LIVE. STOPP has a shorter summary of the tactics detailed in Parent Power.

Planned Parenthood forced to close Arizona abortion facility

On January 6, 2004, the Tucson Citizen reported that Planned Parenthood of Southern Arizona was being forced to close a facility in a Sierra Vista shopping plaza because the leasing agent for the property, Canusa Management Services Inc. of Tucson, told Planned Parenthood that it must vacate their leased space by the end of the month. No reason was given; however, PPSA’s president, Patti Caldwell, noted that this decision comes just three months after PPSA started using the abortion pill Mifeprex at the site. She also said that about 2-6 protestors have been showing up there on Saturdays for about two hours. An employee of a nearby business noted that the protesters who came on weekends were enough to block signs in the plaza and at times they took up a significant part of the parking lot.

Caldwell said the Planned Parenthood facility will close January 27. It had been open in the Tiffany Plaza since 1984, and elsewhere in the town since 1974. Praise God! Thanks and congratulations go to Canusa Management Services Inc. and especially to those faithful protestors who cared enough about the lives of innocent children to spend a few hours a week at the PP killing center to educate the community about Planned Parenthood.

After 5-hour pro-life prayer vigils, PP closes Morrow Co., Ohio facility

Ed and Marsha Taylor of Ohio, sent STOPP this wonderful report in December:

An EWTN short wave news broadcast, early in December 2002, reported that Morrow County, Ohio school officials had agreed to a Planned Parenthood request to train mother-daughter teams, and to pay them bonuses, to recruit teens to use Planned Parenthood services. A Catholic World News item, dated December 3, 2002, confirmed the EWTN report. Planned Parenthood had recently opened a clinic in the village of Cardington and had devised this strategy to increase revenues.

Five couples from Sacred Hearts Church in Cardington met and decided to begin Rosary Prayer vigils at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Cardington. They asked the Thomas More Law Center to notify the village's mayor and chief of police of their intention to demonstrate and to inform them of their First Amendment right to do so. On January 21, 2003, the Feast of St. Agnes, they conducted their first vigil on the street corner next to the clinic. Sacred Hearts pastor, Msgr. Charles J. Foeller, led the Rosary, moving the beads through his bare fingers in the bitter cold.

They maintained a five-hour vigil at the clinic twice per month, covering the entire period of the clinic's office hours. Planned Parenthood increased their hours early last summer and it was decided to hold vigils two days per week at times when high school girls were most likely to visit the clinic. Participant numbers waxed and waned over the eleven-month effort but Our Lady is faithful. She loves her children, born and unborn and she brings answers to prayer. On Tuesday, December 16, a clinic employee was observed moving boxes of patient records from the clinic office. A sign was posted on the door announcing that they had "merged" their operation with another Planned Parenthood Office in a city about twelve miles to the north.

American Life League's STOPP International broke the Morrow County story back in November 2002 after local pro-lifer Tammy Brown provided us with the evidence via fax on 10/22/02 and worked with us extensively thereafter. She deserves congratulations along with the Taylors, Msgr. Charles J. Foeller and the other people who sustained the battle. STOPP ran stories about the situation in Morrow County in the Ryan Reports of November and December of 2002. STOPP also did a press release that fueled some national media attention. Among the national reports were the one from CNS News.

Others picked up the story as well. This resulted in the EWTN story that inspired the people to pray the Rosary at the site as described above. Praise God! STOPP called Planned Parenthood of North Central Ohio and asked why the Cardington facility closed. The PP receptionist said there wasn’t enough business. As for the Taylors they added, “A bit more than a year ago we had no idea Our Lord would call us into an involvement in the Pro-life movement. We're not finished yet, just asking Our Lord, "What next?"

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