Planned Parenthood announced its new solution for business owners to counter “systemic racism” — free birth control! The Business for Birth Control 2020 campaign was released on June 23, beginning as “a movement of solidarity from 12 national companies affirming their employees’ birth control coverage as an essential part of their health insurance plans…” 

What does this have to do with racism? Planned Parenthood claims that as the country struggles with racism and the COVID-19 pandemic, access to birth control is under attack in the United States and worldwide. Their campaign states that restrictions on birth control target colored communities and that “[s]ystemic racism has already made the promise of reproductive freedom particularly unattainable for the Black community.”   

A few points to consider.   

Planned Parenthood is racist.

Planned Parenthood is backfiring on itself here because if anyone targets people of color, it’s them. The Guttmacher Institute reported in 2008 that the abortion rate for black women is 5x more than for white women.  Abortion is also the leading cause of death for black Americans and in New York City, more black babies are aborted than born. The list of targeted atrocities goes on.     

Most women who get abortions were on birth control that failed. 

Second, the high rate of abortions is largely due to failed birth control. The Center for Disease Control reported that 9% of women get pregnant after their first year of birth control, and 51% of abortion patients report using contraception the month they got pregnant, according to the Guttmacher Institute.  This is all part of Planned Parenthood’s scheme to get more women to have abortions.  

Birth control harms women.

Birth control is chemically dangerous for women so it should not even be on the table.  The most widely used form of birth control, “the pill,” is categorized by the World Health Organization as a Group I carcinogen, which is the highest-ranking category and the substances in it contain the highest risks for cancer.  Read more about the physical harms of hormonal birth control here. 

It violates the conscience rights of employers.

This campaign would single out any business owner opposed to birth control and abortion as anti-women and “systemically racist” for not providing their employees with the means to harm themselves and their babies.  All hormonal birth control as the capability of causing a very early abortion by making the womb inhospitable to newly-conceived humans (i.e. preventing implantation). Business owners have their conscience rights protected by the Department of Health and Human Services’ 2017 companion rules ensuring that businesses can not be forced to provide birth control to employees.   

The fact is, we don’t need Planned Parenthood.  Planned Parenthood needs us to continue manipulating women and bullying business owners to buy into their industry and propaganda. With this campaign, they are merely bulking up their business by manipulating other businesses. Again, Planned Parenthood is creating problems, not solving them.