International

International Planned Parenthood Federation has become one of the most powerful organizations on earth. Its policies, and the great success it has had in persuading various governments to implement them, are having far-reaching effects right now on the everyday life of billions of people, and will be one of the major influences on the moral and ethical attitudes of future generations. The IPPF is a globe-grinding octopus with its headquarters in London, England, and affiliated national Associations in 85 countries. Some of its funds come from private sources, but most are grants from such national governments as those of Sweden, Britain, West Germany, Japan and Canada. Forty per cent of its budget comes from the United States Agency for Planned Development, with generous contributions also from the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Bank.

In 1965 the budget of IPPF was $30,000. In 1974-75 it was $80,000,000. The IPPF has consultative status to the major United Nations specialized Agencies, including the World Health Organization and The United Nations’ Fund for Population Activities. Its magazine, People, published in London, has editions in English, French and Spanish, and states that it is “a world digest…in the family planning and population fields for those who make, influence or carry out policy,” and that “make, influence,” etc., is no idle boast. IPPF is now working at a level of medical and governmental jurisdiction, from village health clinics in the Third World to the most sophisticated hospitals in urban America, and from tiny councils or village elders to the circles of power in Washington, Ottawa or at the UN.

Abortion

Just what policies are being promulgated with all these funds and this experience? What does the “planning” in Planned Parenthood mean? In 1963 a Planned Parenthood pamphlet stated “is birth control abortion? Definitely not. An abortion kills the life of the baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it. Birth control merely postpones the beginning of life.”

There has been a significant change in emphasis. Today IPPF plays a conspicuous role all over the world in procuring “liberalized” abortion legislation from national governments, and in setting up the referral services at the clinics needed to perform the “terminations.” The Federation itself admits that abortion has become predominant in its policy. The January-February 1976 issue of IPPF News, its own inter-group newspaper, contains an article in which Carl Wahren, head of the Population Division, Swedish International Development Authority, complains that he is surprised that few of the National Associations mention family life and sex education. “Why is it” he asks, “that such things as legal matters” (eg. Abortion-on-demand laws) “seem to be so much more attractive to most organizations than do such pioneering service activities as sex education? It seems to me that various church groups are far ahead of family planning associations in this area.!” A frank admission, but is anyone really listening? Certainly the public image of the IPPF is far different from its actual work.

The IPPF maintains again and again in its literature that the major concern facing the world is overpopulation. All problems – poverty, pollution, famine, lack of Third World development – are caused by “the epidemic of pregnancies.” Authorities, such as British economist Barbara Ward, who, instead blame inequitable distribution of resources, greed and waste, are belittled or ignored. The Federation states that people must be “conditioned” to accept the fact that overpopulation is at the base of all our troubles. Even countries such as the United States and Canada, where the birthrate has fallen well below the replacement level, must be brainwashed as to the horrors to come if the world doesn’t accept zero population growth and the methods needed to achieve it.

Incredibly, in saying this Planned Parenthood ignores its own research. The January 1975 number of Family Planning Digest written by Planned Parenthood, and published by the US Department of Health and Welfare, reports on an “extensive survey of 24 developing nations.” Twelve of these nations had “vigorous, well-organized family planning programmes.” Twelve countries had “only implicit programmes, or their governments discouraged family planning.” To the chagrin of the IPPF, all 12 who ignored the sacred cow of family planning experienced “very high rates of economic growth and increases in individual incomes.” But facts have never deterred Planned Parenthood. A prime example of this is Mary Calderone, former Medical Director, Planned Parenthood USA, who states that “Abortion is the taking of a life,” but still goes on being one of the leaders in the abortion-on-demand movement in the US.

The main thrust of the IPPF abortion propaganda is that it should be readily available everywhere “on demand,” and that the rights of the unborn baby or of the father of the child should not be considered. Even family planning is no longer related to marriage of the couple but to the individual and his needs. “Choose the life you want – homosexual, bisexual,” the IPPF counsels. Many of their sex education programmes attack the family and unsurp parental prerogatives. In one booklet teenagers are told “Your parents, your teachers, even your friends may not agree, but it’s not their life, it’s yours!” The IPPF has been active in having laws passed which allow children to be given contraceptives, treatment for VD, and even abortions without the consent or against the wishes of their parents.

The individual free choice which was supposed to be an integral part of the family planning programmes is being abandoned. How to Reduce Population, a publication of the IPPF advises you how to:

-encourage homosexuality;

-introduce a child tax;

-promote compulsory abortion of out-of-wedlock pregnancies;

-get payments to arrange abortions;

-limit or eliminate financial/medical aid to those families with more than the “allowed” number of children;

-promote compulsory sterilization of all those who have reached the “allowed” number of children.

In Family Planning Perspectives, Professor Garrett Hardin states that soon “we will have to go beyond purely voluntary methods” of birth control. He asks, “How much social dislocation are we willing to put up with for the sake of attaining zero population growth quickly?” He warns that “involuntary birth control” will be necessary. He notes that one method which has been advocated is contraceptives in drinking water, and, since people might find such methods repellent, counsels that “GOOD coercive methods must be invented.” He laments that the United Nations official proclamation that every couple has the right to decide how many children they have and how they will be spaced, “is going to be a source of endless trouble in the years to come.”

The IPPF, then, is part of the new morality in which abortion is “a backup to contraception, a woman’s inherent right, a population stabilizer.” Dr. Malcolm Potts, Medical Director of the IPPF has stated that no country in history has ever controlled its population without using abortion. Since the IPPF has a virtual monopoly on family planning programmes in most of the globe, its standards are the ones which will be imposed on the world unless responsible, knowledgeable people protest. To get a clearer picture of what these standards are, let us turn to one of IPPF’s National Associations, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

USA

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has evolved from an organization for contraceptive education and counseling through pregnancy testing, to being a leader of abortion-on-demand. It took 50 years to get a national contraceptive law passed in the United States, but by 1970 the Family Planning Services and populations Act was law. However, the Act explicitly excluded money for abortions, and so Planned Parenthood joined the fight for abortion-on-demand, and so Planned Parenthood joined the fight for abortion-on-demand, challenging on constitutional grounds “restrictive” abortion laws, both state and federal.

The late Dr. Alan Guttmacher, past president of the PPF of America, has said that “legalized abortion is far from the ideal solution to unwanted pregnancies,” but for him and his federation, abortion is the right of every woman, and society must provide every facility for quick and easy “terminations” when the mother demands it. Guttmacher was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Euthanasia Society and on the Advisory Council of the Euthanasia Education Fund.

After January 1973, when the United States Supreme Court lifted all effective legal bars to abortion on demand, planned Parenthood became even more actively involved in the abortion issue, through counseling, referral, and the setting up of abortion clinics such as the one in New York where an assembly line in abortions has helped New York City’s abortion rate to outstrip its live birth rate since 1971. This “abortorium,” to use their pwn word, is known as the “Margaret Sanger Clinic.”

Sanger

Margaret Sanger was an early campaigner for birth control. Her writings are very instructive, and it is indicative, in Dr. Guttmacher’s words, of the “moral standards” of Planned parenthood, that she is their patron saint. In Women and the New Race Mrs. Sanger wrote: “In savage life as well as barbarism and civilization has woman’s instinctive urge to freedom and wider development asserted itself in an effort to control her family….When a traveler reproached the women of a South American tribe for the practice of infanticide, he was met by the retort ‘Men have no business to meddle in women’s affairs.'”

Wrote Sanger: “the most merciful thing that a large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” As of November 1975, the Sanger Clinic was carrying out 200 abortions a week.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research and development arm of the PPF of America found that “only” 892,00 abortions had been performed in the United States in 1974. This complaint was repeated in the Family Planning Perspectives of May 1976, where it was noted that in 1975 about 988,000 women received legal abortion sin the USA (an increase of 11 percent over 1974) far short of the need for up to 1.8 million abortions, according to PPF.

No one can fault Planned Parenthood if this “need” is not met. They have over 700 agencies now throughout the United States. They have set up 1600 “hot lines for youth” at different colleges and high schools. They collected funds for the defense of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, the Boston abortionist found guilty of manslaughter in the death of a baby boy, 18 to 24 weeks old who dies after being aborted by a hysterotomy abortion in 1973, and succeeded in having the verdict overturned. Their attorneys have brought suits before the Supreme Court to overturn state laws which they consider “unduly restrictive” of “every woman’s right to abort.”

Planned Parenthood has advised US State and Federal Courts that “birth control methods” (including abortion) must be provided to sexually active teenagers regardless of their parents’ wishes. Some states have actually adopted this proposal with little or no debate, since the majority of parents were unaware that this controversial legislation was even being considered. Planned Parenthood has also demanded the “withdrawal of all federal funds from public and private hospitals that bar or greatly limit abortion or sterilization to the poor or teenagers.” It boasts that it has never lost a suit in the entire United States regarding counseling youngsters without parental consent.

Planned Parenthood and schools

As a leader in the sex education lobby, Planned Parenthood has largely succeeded in inserting into the school system all over the US “educational materials” which are obscene and pornographic. In the last year there has been growing anger and complaints from many parents as they came to realize just exactly what is being shown to their children without their consent. Two of the most appalling Planned Parenthood devices are the films About Sex and the incredible Sex Comix written for Planned Parenthood by Sol Gordon.

The film About Sex was found, by the Arizona House Interim Committee on Obscenity, to be “blatantly offensive” in February 1976. The Arizona Committee had had the film brought to its attention because of protests from parents who learned that the film was being shown in the schools without their knowledge. James Skelly, chairman of the House Committee, reported that Planned Parenthood claimed that the film teaches sexual responsibility, but, he said, seeing the film revealed the opposite was true. “The whole prevailing philosophy of the film is riveted on sexual activity. The idea is ‘If sex feels good, do it!’ There is a rock group that sings a song whose message is ‘Let’s get together. Sex. That’s what it’s all about. Sex!'”

The film shows every kind of sexual relationship, normal or perverted, complete with gutter language and nudity, all designed to “appeal to the prurient interest of minors.” Abortion is “easy, safe, with no complications or dangers to future births.” One girl in the film says, “It was so different from what you were brought up to think about abortion.” Throughout the film there is no mention of sex as the foundation of family life. Always the emphasis is on pleasurable stimuli, on “feeling good.” This film is being shown in other American states by Planned Parenthood, and has been used in Canada including some Toronto area schools.

Sol Gordon

Sol Gordon, the creator of About Sex, is a Professor of Family and Child Development at Syracuse University in New York state. Planned parenthood describes him as “America’s leading authority on how to talk to kids about sex.” He was the guest speaker to the annual general meeting of Planned Parenthood Toronto in 1975.

Another of Gordon’s “achievements” in child and teenage education are his Zing Sex Comix. “Sol Gordon’s assumption,” says Dr. Susan Huck in a report she has prepared on Gordon and his ED-U Press, “is that all children are already promiscuous.” (At that time he was writing a book on sex for three to six year olds.) “The books encourage youngsters to engage in homosexual experiences, to disregards any thoughts of the evils of pornography, and suggest that sodomy, bisexuality and masturbation are acceptable. Done in skull-cracking shades of orange and blue, the comics feature drawings more often found in public restroom walls than in serious sex manuals. The chapter on contraceptive foam is illustrated by a drawing of a fireman shooting an extinguisher between a woman’s legs. Feature performers are Captain Vee-Dee-O and Ms. Wanda Lust. Chapters consist of one page east. The text is full of such ‘jokes’ as ‘flying condom’, ‘groin larceny’, ‘Mt. Vulva’ and such gems of information as “We think having an abortion is more moral than bringing an unwanted child into this world. Having a medical abortion before the twentieth week of pregnancy is safer than giving birth – so don’t let anyone tell you it’s a dangerous operation!” These books are given out by Planned Parenthood all over North America. And why not? Doesn’t Gordon give Planned parenthood a plug in every book, urging the children to contact their nearest office!

In Canada, these comic books have been distributed in the Toronto area by Planned parenthood of Toronto. They are being distributed by the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada for wider distribution throughout the country.

What is also noteworthy about the comics is that Gordon pushes contraceptive products by name. The children are told to use condoms, foams, jellies, etc. and all by brand name. Many of these are the products of the Ortho Pharmaceutical Company. Why is Gordon so specific in his recommendations? Could it be because one of the major contributors to Gordon’s enterprises is the Cape Branch Foundation? The foundation has its headquarters at the main manufacturing plant of Johnson and Johnson, a subsidiary of Ortho Pharmaceuticals. James Loring Johnson, founder of the foundation, admits that he has turned over virtually the total income from the foundation to Gordon for the purpose of producing the Sex ComixI. In addition, Gordon himself is one of the trustees of the foundation. Giving yourself grants is supposed to be against the law. Under the tax code it is called “self-dealing.” But this doesn’t seem to bother Gordon of Ortho.

Funding is close to Planned Parenthood’s heart also. At their annual convention in St. Louis the audience was told that the worst way to hurt Planned Parenthood was by the withdrawal of funds. This happened, for example, in Portland, Oregon and Phoenix, Arizona,  where local charitable boards became dischanted with Planned Parenthood’s methods. Marguerute Gilpatric, Resource Director, urged personal contacts with well-to-do citizens of local communities as the best way to obtain private contributions.

Government money, however, represented the major portion of the discussion. The audience was warded not to become independent of Federal funds. The more sources of money the better. One speaker advised trying to play one federal agency against another for additional funds. A Texas delegate, who mentioned that her office had received so much private money that it didn’t need federal funds, was cautioned not to become independent, and , if necessary, to make up reasons for asking for more help. The audience chuckled at the suggestion that “one can always raise salaries” to use up an excessive treasury.