Comments by David Bereit, national director of American Life League's STOPP International, delivered at STOPP news conference on April 13, 2005:
My name is David Bereit, and I am honored to serve as the new National Director of American Life League’s STOPP International.
I got involved in the fight against Planned Parenthood in 1998, when Planned Parenthood announced its intent to build a $1.2 million abortion facility in my hometown of Bryan/College Station, Texas – the first abortion clinic in the history of the community that serves as home to Texas A&M University.
I began to volunteer with the Coalition for Life, a community-based organization that was formed to fight back against Planned Parenthood's agenda in our town. After the facility opened in 1999 and began to terminate innocent children, my conviction grew stronger, and I began to take on more and more responsibilities in the pro-life effort. I also began to see that abortion was not the only problem with Planned Parenthood. Its sex-ed programs were detrimental to young people, and encouraged promiscuity and sexual experimentation. Its services allowed women to be used as sex objects by men. Its philosophies were undermining traditional moral values.
However, it was in 2001 when I finally came to the realization that I needed to leave my career in the pharmaceutical industry to devote my full-time energy to stopping Planned Parenthood. I quit my professional job two weeks after coming to that conclusion, on July 10, 2001, to lead that local fight as the Executive Director of the Coalition for Life.
Over the last few years, many amazing accomplishments have been achieved by the people of Bryan/College Station working to stop Planned Parenthood, however three major successes stood out from the rest:
- We built a community coalition of 60 churches and more than 5,000 individuals who joined together at the grassroots level to systematically remove Planned Parenthood’s harmful influence from our town.
- We rallied more than 3,000 people to get Planned Parenthood and its programs completely kicked out of our local schools.
- We led the statewide effort that stripped Planned Parenthood of more than $13 million a year of taxpayer funding through the Texas legislature. Planned Parenthood sued the state, but just a month ago, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the measure as constitutional.
As a result of these three decisive victories, there have been many side benefits as well:
Abortions at Planned Parenthood in Bryan/College Station dropped by approximately 15% in 2003 and an additional 28% in 2004, sparing hundreds of children’s lives, and overall customer traffic at the facility has experienced a sharp decline as well.
Planned Parenthood acknowledged to the media that Bryan/College Station has become "the most consistent and active" opposition their organization has experienced at any of its 836 clinics -- so much so that their national president labeled our town, "the most anti-choice place in the nation."
People of faith and conscience have gained hope: hope that they really can make a difference in the face of injustice and immorality.
When I was recently asked to join STOPP International, I thought back to the wisdom of the phrase, "to whom much is given, much is expected," and I realized that I have an obligation to spread the effectiveness of these advocacy efforts to every single town and city where Planned Parenthood pushes its agenda on women, children, and taxpayers.
As a result, STOPP is going to build on the proven track record of success from one town, and use it as a model to empower concerned citizens across America, enabling them to systematically reduce, and ultimately remove Planned Parenthood's influence from their communities as well.
This will be done through three targeted efforts:
- Building community-based coalitions of churches and faithful citizens to oppose Planned Parenthood at the grassroots level
- Training and mobilizing people to expel Planned Parenthood from their local schools
- Empowering activists to strip Planned Parenthood's tax funding at the state level
By focusing on these three specific campaigns -- and by maximizing their impact -- STOPP will continue to reduce Planned Parenthood's business and influence nationwide, and move our country toward a brighter future.
So let's look at each of these campaigns...
- First, STOPP will build community-based coalitions of churches and people of faith to oppose Planned Parenthood at the grassroots level.
This is a critical front, because Planned Parenthood sees as one of its greatest priorities the attempt to win over the soul of America. Now, lest you think I am simply using rhetoric, let me point you to the brand new book, written by the head of the clergy board for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, entitled, "Sacred Work: Planned Parenthood and its Clergy Alliances." The book reflects on how Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, recruited clergy and used churches to push her agenda on society, even though she herself rejected faith.
The book goes on to suggest that it is now time for Planned Parenthood to return to that tactic. While the book acknowledges that Planned Parenthood is a secular humanist organization, it explains the intent to frame their abortion and birth control efforts as "sacred work" of "social justice for women," in an attempt to get into the churches and ultimately undermine the foundational tenets of Christianity.
We have already begun to see this played out when Planned Parenthood hired its first-ever national "chaplain" last year.
We saw this played out in Oregon, where Planned Parenthood announced that it has actually opened two new clinics in local churches in recent weeks.
We saw this when Planned Parenthood sent a team to Europe to learn how to expand sex education programs among youth. Upon returning, the team prepared a report with an entire section focused on "religious influence." It praised the religious community for "standing aside" in Europe on matters of abortion and contraception, and identified the drastic drop-off in church attendance as one factor that has helped to spread the so-called "safe sex" agenda.
Frankly, we are not going to allow Planned Parenthood to hijack Christianity. We cannot stand idly by and allow these subtle, but seductive -- and secular -- messages to creep into the church.
We know from experience that when people of faith learn the truth about Planned Parenthood, and see how its philosophies directly contradict scripture and Christian teaching, they will unite together -- across denominational, ethnic, and socio-economic lines -- to remove the organization's influence from their communities.
To this end, STOPP will be traveling across the country, speaking to churches and organizations, and providing targeted materials to expose how Planned Parenthood is undermining faith and moral values.
Through this ambitious outreach, we are in the process of raising up a new generation of leaders at the community level, and showing them exactly how to build strong local networks to oppose Planned Parenthood.
- Second, STOPP will train and mobilize people to expel Planned Parenthood from their local schools.
This is also an urgent battleground, because Planned Parenthood publications have stated that the organization is ramping up the efforts to aggressively push its sex-ed programs into schools all across the country with new zeal and expanded funding.
Keep in mind that according to Planned Parenthood's own survey, conducted by Louis Harris pollsters, teens who have taken their so-called "comprehensive" sex-education programs have a 50% higher rate of sexual activity than those who did not go through the programs. And increased promiscuity equals increased abortion and STD business for Planned Parenthood down the road.
These programs push kids away from their own parents, break down sexual inhibitions, and use shock value and cartoon pornography to "educate."
STOPP is implementing an aggressive, step-by-step mobilization plan, teaching parents how to regain control of what their children are being taught, helping them to create controversy around Planned Parenthood and its programs, empowering them to build a community-wide movement of like-minded people, and teaching them strategies to get school officials to shut Planned Parenthood out of local schools.
We did it in Bryan/College Station, gaining national attention on the syndicated Dr. Laura radio show, and we will do it again and again across the country, shielding our children from an immoral and harmful organization that only makes money when our young people are sexually active.
- Third, STOPP will mobilize activists to strip Planned Parenthood's tax funding at the state level.
This is crucial, because about one-third of Planned Parenthood’s income comes from our tax dollars – to the tune of $265 million last year alone. Much of this money comes from federal programs and is sent to state legislatures to distribute as they see fit.
In Texas, our state legislature overwhelmingly passed a rider to the state budget in 2003 that prohibited organizations that perform abortions, including Planned Parenthood, from receiving tax funding.
Other states have successfully removed Planned Parenthood funding in slightly different ways with great success. Now, Texas joins Colorado, Missouri, Ohio, North Dakota, and Mississippi as states that provide no tax funding to Planned Parenthood.
We are taking the best practices from each of these states to help activists in the remaining states launch campaigns to remove public funding from Planned Parenthood.
This way we can ensure that people who recognize the harm being done by Planned Parenthood will no longer be forced to underwrite the controversial organization. And we’ve seen that when Planned Parenthood experiences setbacks in tax funding, it begins closing down clinics, meaning fewer abortions, and less harm to women and children.
These are the three focused campaigns that will take the fight against Planned Parenthood to a whole new level:
- Building community-based coalitions of churches and faithful citizens to oppose Planned Parenthood at the grassroots level
- Training and mobilizing people to expel Planned Parenthood from their local schools
- Empowering activists to strip Planned Parenthood's tax funding at the state level
These efforts are not based on theory, but on proven experience. Proven experience from my former hometown, but also from dozens of other towns and cities where people of faith and conscience have won decisive victories against Planned Parenthood.
We will implement these campaigns with focus and determination, and we will not give up because, frankly, the future of our country is at stake.
Thank you.
Release issued: 13 Apr 05
