Planned Parenthood's dishonest millions

Are the Senate Democrats willing to shut down the U.S. government to save Planned Parenthood?

PP, which proudly promotes sexual activity by minors and aborts more than 300,000 Americans annually, has been on the federal dole since 1965. Last year, the figure was about $350 million. This is the first time our annual tribute to America's biggest abortion business has been seriously threatened. The Continuing Resolution passed by the House doesn't include a dime for PP.

This is a bad time for the abortion movement: Polls show that most Americans identify themselves as pro-life. Most are probably more worried about a bankrupt U.S. government than about half-million-dollar-a-year executives at PP having to cut back on lattés.

But if you think the abortion movement is in trouble simply because the political winds have shifted right, you would be wrong. It is happening because the industry's decades of lies and corruption have been coming to light.

On Feb. 8, counselors at a Bronx branch of PP were captured on video offering to help a man who told them he was the pimp for an underage prostitution ring. You can watch counselors cheerfully explain to him how to falsify records and get free abortions for the girls – who he said spoke no English and were as young as 14. PP says this and the many other undercover videos taken at their centers around the country misrepresent them.

Nonsense. The videos show the same Planned Parenthood attitude I've known and fought for 25 years: Bring in the business, skirting the law where necessary. I'm founder and director of EMC/Frontline Pregnancy Centers, a private charity that offers women alternatives to abortion. Recently, one of our clients, who was 27 weeks pregnant, stopped by our building looking for our counselor Linda, because she wanted a baby car seat and some other supplies. By mistake, she walked into the Planned Parenthood office in the same building (you can see her video statement at our website).

PP's counselor told our client that Linda no longer worked in the building (not true) and that PP had no baby supplies. She suggested our client have an abortion instead. But that would be illegal in New York, where abortion is only legal to 24 weeks. To get around that, the counselor suggested our client sign a statement claiming "mental anguish" at not being able to find baby supplies at PP. (If they claim they made her sick, they can get paid for killing her baby!) Fortunately, the client found her way to our office.

The abortion industry is founded on lies. On Feb. 21, a mentor and friend of mine, obstetrician-gynecologist Bernard Nathanson, died at 84. In 1969, he believed passionately in abortion and co-founded the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws, or NARAL. Central to NARAL's campaign to legalize abortion was Bernie's claim that close to 10,000 women were dying in illegal, "back-alley" abortions every year. He later admitted this was a lie, but the number is still quoted. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the true figure for 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade, was 39.

Another lie crucial to the promotion of abortion is that a baby in the womb is a brainless, senseless "blob of tissue." Bernie turned pro-life in the 1970s when he saw the first pre-natal ultrasound images. His landmark 1985 ultrasound movie, "The Silent Scream," showed an unborn child in the womb frantically trying to avoid an abortionist's knife. Today, the abortion lobby's "blob theory" of human life is refuted by the sonograms on the refrigerators of parents and grandparents everywhere.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL are afraid of the truth. Armed with their political contributions – which have been subsidized by U.S. taxpayers – they have been trying to make it illegal for centers like ours to tell the truth about life in the womb and abortion. Their latest attempt is Bill 371-A, now before New York's City Council. That bill – clearly unconstitutional – would in effect require us to promote abortion in our ads and to every client who came to see us.

On Jan. 21, Kelli Conlin, the president of the New York chapter of the organization Bernie Nathanson co-founded, NARAL, abruptly resigned. She is now the target of a criminal fraud probe by the Manhattan D.A.'s office for allegedly diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars of donors' money to pay lavish personal expenses.

It would be an appropriate tribute to Bernie if this year, Congress began the process of repairing the carnage and dishonesty he and other misguided people set in motion more than 40 years ago.

Chris Slattery is founder and president of EMC/Frontline Pregnancy Centers, which operates 12 walk-in centers in New York City.