40 Days

02-20-2022Pastor's LetterFr. John Bonavitacola

Dear Friends,

In recent years Alcohol producers have tried to market themselves as socially responsible. That’s why you frequently will see attached to beer commercials the slogan: “Drink Responsibly” or “Don’t Drink and Drive”. Does it work? Well yes but not in the way you think. Alcohol producers spend a lot of money on advertising and they don’t do it as a shot in the dark or with their fingers crossed hoping it has an effect. They carefully and meticulously measure the impact of their marketing strategies. What they find when they run those “Drink Responsibly” ads is that alcohol sales actually increase. What a fantastic cover: make yourself look socially responsible and increase your sales. Brilliant.

More recently, the marijuana producers caught on to that same strategy so they advertise with the slogan: “Use Responsibly” and “You must be over 21”. They likewise see their sales increase. Well, Planned Parenthood uses a similar marketing strategy, they claim: “the greater availability of contraception will reduce the need for abortion”. Of course this makes them look socially responsible and seemingly wanting to reduce abortion rates. But like the alcohol and pot producers PP studies the effects of their marketing as well. And when it comes to contraception what the research reveals is that when contraception is widely and easily available at low or no cost, abortion rates actually increase. New York City is a prime example of that: abundant availability of contraception and still the highest abortion rates in the country. Hence PP’s push to provide contraception actually helps their bottom line: increase abortion sales. There is another little trick they like to pull. They very coyly claim that only 3% of their business is abortion, which makes you believe that abortion is a rather infrequent service they provide. But how do they arrive at that statistic?

Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review explained this well. He said the 3% figure is sort of like saying, “I only drive drunk three percent of the time or I only beat my wife three-percent of time”. Or that “Major League Baseball teams could say that they sell about 20 million hot dogs and play 2,430 games in a season, so baseball is only .012 percent of what they do”. The 3% figure is meant to distract you from the main event.

So if a woman goes to Planned Parenthood and receives a pregnancy test, an STD test, birth control pills and an abortion, that abortion was ‘only’ 25% of the services she received. The fact is that Planned UnParenthood performs over 333,000 abortions a year, which is by far one of their most expensive, and profit inducing services. It is their reason for existence. All of the other women’s health services they provide are already provided by Federally certified Health Centers across the country, which are available at low or no cost and available in rural areas where PP is not. Planned Parenthood mostly targets urban areas, university areas and minority areas so they can target the most vulnerable women and be faithful to the racist eugenic mission of their founder Margaret Sanger.

That being said, Planned Parenthood’s biggest effort by far is pushing “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” (CSE) in our schools. This way they can indoctrinate the young and guarantee a steady stream of new customers. It is what big tobacco did, it is what marijuana and alcohol producers want: young users become lifelong users = profit. PP targets every school district in the country, cultivates local people to run for school board so that they can push CSE. I saw it up close while I was Pastor in Tempe and no matter how many community members pushed the Tempe School Board to reject PP’s CSE program it became very obvious that PP had most of the Board members and City Council members in their back pocket. After all the not-forprofit Planned Parenthood spends tens of millions of dollars supporting candidates for office. What do to: first don’t buy the lie that PP is in business for anything other than abortion. Second get involved locally and make your voice heard. Here are two great websites to fight CSE in our schools: notinourschools.net and CSEfacts.org. If we do not defeat PP’s CSE agenda the abortion battle will be almost impossible going forward.

Also participate in the next upcoming 40 Days For Life (40daysforlife.com) March 2- April 10. There are many ways to participate including peace prayer vigils as on the area Abortion Clinics, the closest on being in Glendale.