The former president of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Leana Wen, has released a new memoir entitled “Lifelines: A Doctor’s Journey in the Fight for Public Health.” While Dr. Wen shares more about her own personal story, she also provides insight into what it was like to work for Planned Parenthood and its obsession with abortion.
In 2018, Dr. Leana Wen took over for Cecile Richards as the head of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business. However, Wen quickly rankled feathers as she wanted the organization to do something it hasn’t done in years, focus on providing health care to low-income communities.
As it turned out, the board and many employees weren’t interested in trying to help people achieve better health.
In her first television interview on “The View” after being announced as the new president, Wen thought she had done well conveying her vision of Planned Parenthood to the country. But she quickly received a text message from a board member, who said, “Next time, make sure you talk about abortion.”
It didn’t end there
A national staffer told her, “You need to talk about abortion at every media interview. You’re the president of Planned Parenthood. People expect that from you.”
“Not saying ‘abortion’ sounds as if you’re ashamed of it,” another said.
That wasn’t Wen’s intention, she is pro-abortion after all, but she’s also a physician who was the City of Baltimore’s health commissioner and wanted to focus on the business’ health care options, like birth control, sex ed and even providing treatment for opioid addiction, diabetes management and mental health counseling.
Yahoo! News wrote, “She believed using ‘pro-abortion’ language alienated people whose decision to get one was painful. And, she said, most Americans have complicated, nuanced views on abortion. She believed Planned Parenthood should meet them where they are, she thought.”
That’s a perfectly reasonable view, and Dr. Wen would have brought more people into Planned Parenthood’s sphere with her more inclusive perspective. She wanted to help people with their other health care needs, beyond abortion.
It’s a perspective she implies was more readily accepted and embraced by clinical workers throughout the country. But the New York office, where staff members are likely paid considerably more than those at the local level, were uninterested in anything but abortion.
“If we don’t talk about abortion openly, loudly, and proudly, as a positive moral good, then we are further stigmatizing it and the people who need it,” a colleague told Wen.
But Planned Parenthood pushes abortion at the expensive of other live-saving measures, specifically cancer screenings. At one point, it did 1.7 million pap smears in 1993, but that number is now down to roughly 273,000. When breast exams were first introduced in 1998 the abortion business did 1.1 million, and now it only performed about 270,000 last year.
Unfortunately for millions of vulnerable young women across the country, pap smears and breast exams don’t pay, but abortion does.
Planned Parenthood remains obsessed with abortion not only for business reasons, but ideological ones as well. Dr. Wen tried to change course a bit and was quickly dumped by an organization more interested in abortion and death than saving lives and health care.
Photo from Kris Tripplaar/REUTERS