Here’s a beautiful lesson in how the Christian Right distorts the facts, courtesy of the magazine Charisma. Whose mailing list I’m on. Because I’m a masochist.

This is the headline of the email they sent me:

Abortion Superstore Celebrates 6 Million Baby Murders

Alright. I’ll click on that.

This is the headline of the article that email linked to:

Planned Parenthood Celebrates 6 Million-Plus Abortions

No longer the “Abortion Superstore” and no longer “murdering babies,” did Planned Parenthood really celebrate abortions?

No. Of course not. They never have.

What actually happened is that Planned Parenthood just had their 96th anniversary. There was no formal party of any sort, much less a “celebration of abortion.” Just a press release on their website indicating that Planned Parenthood does far more than provide abortion services:

Today, there are nearly 800 Planned Parenthood health centers nationwide. More than 90 percent of Planned Parenthood services are focused on prevention: every year, Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses provide family planning counseling and birth control to 2.2 million women and men, more than 1.1 million pregnancy tests, 770,000 Pap tests, identifying about 94,000 women at risk of developing cervical cancer, nearly 750,000 lifesaving breast exams, more than four million tests and treatments for sexually transmitted infections including HIV, nearly 1.5 million emergency contraception kits, and education programs to nearly 1.1 million people. The work of Planned Parenthood prevents an estimated 584,000 unintended pregnancies and 277,000 abortions each year in the U.S.

Improving women’s health? Silence from the Christian Right.

Preventing unplanned pregnancy? It’s another Holocaust! they insinuate.

Planned Parenthood doesn’t celebrate abortions. They serve women (and men) who have health concerns — and they very likely serve many Christian women along the way. But Charisma, much like the rest of the Christian Right, can’t admit that. So they spin it into something so far removed from reality, you’d have to be religious to be suckered into believing it.



