By John F. Di Leo -
Reflections on the 47th anniversary of Roe V. Wade
What is “family planning?”
Most of us think of the term as referring to logical, traditional advice: Don’t have sexual relations until marriage; try to time things so that you don’t have more kids, more quickly, then you can handle; agree on which denomination to raise your children in, early on, so you don’t have fights later… things like that.
But since the 1960s and 1970s, Planned Parenthood’s definition of “family planning” has taken over. Planned Parenthood, in fact, basically owns the term. They market themselves as “a family planning organization…” in fact, as the family planning organization.
Is this fair? Is it really a “family” that PP helps you to plan?
Or is their goal really more about discouraging the establishment of families entirely?
Planned Parenthood is a powerful, enormous organization, with tentacles not only across the country geographically, but also deeply embedded in our politics, our education apparatus, and our healthcare sector.
Planned Parenthood is heavily funded by government, both directly and indirectly. Directly, as the recipient of direct government grants, and indirectly, as the provider of services that are paid for by various types of local, state, and federal welfare.
So, what they do, and in particular, how they think, are important issues for public consideration.
Planned Parenthood exists to do four things:
- to provide abortions,
- to dispense family planning advice and the birth control at its heart,
- to provide minimal other medical services (so minimal that they barely register statistically, but just so that they can claim that they perform them), and
- to perform political activism, particularly in the form of tens of millions of dollars of direct political contributions (and incalculable indirect ones) to candidates on their side.
We certainly all know what abortion is, and of course we all know, finally, the extent of their massive political activism… Only in recent years has it been exposed how little other medical activity they have actually perform.
But the term “family planning,” the subject they have made their justification for existence, gets little direct analysis or challenge. So, let’s talk about that today.
They would have us believe that their idea of family planning is the same as ours: to help people make wise choices, so that their clients’ families develop in a way that is good for both parents and children, and for society as well.
But they can only come to this position by establishing a very shaky premise: the families can be planned at all. PP uses birth control and abortion to discourage pregnancies, on the theory that it there is always a better time than this to have a child. A year from now, or two years from now, or three… “Don’t have a child now, have one then. That would be better for you.”
But can you plan that way? Is it really possible?
Ask a doctor sometime; you may be surprised at the answer.
As the expansion of fertility clinics in recent years proves, people who want children cannot always get them, and can certainly not get them at the time they want, without drastic measures.
Please allow me to give a few examples, from my own family history, which I think is reasonably typical.
Let’s start by going back a generation. I was born just under a year into my parents’ marriage… ten months in. My parents were so broke at the time, they couldn’t afford an apartment, even in Chicago’s cheap Rogers Park, Edgewater, or Lakeview neighborhoods, without waterbug or cockroach infestations… Dad was still paying off his own father‘s funeral from four years prior.
The PP crowd would have said “Abort that one.” If given the chance, PP would have told my folks, “You’re young still, it’s too early in your marriage, and your finances are not ready for a child yet.”
If they had taken that advice, I would not exist, nor would my three kids.
Almost 20 years later, my parents had their second child. They had always hoped for a big family, but just weren’t lucky… They just had two opportunities: myself, and then, my sister, 20 years later.
When Mom would go to the doctor during that second pregnancy, the nurses would say, “Oh yes, we’ll be seeing a lot of you! You will need lots of check-ups; we will have to watch you closely… Because you’re so old.”
Mom was 44.
Learning that she was expecting at 44, the PP crowd would have said, “That’s too late to have a baby. Think of the risks.” And they would have recommended my sister be aborted, to avoid those risks.
But my sister was fine, without complications, and has enjoyed a wonderful life, with a wonderful husband, and she now has five wonderful children. The PP crowd would not have allowed that… My parents never had another pregnancy between her and me. If taken, PP’s advice would have eliminated not only my sister and me, but also her five children and my three. That’s the real result of PP advice.
Now let’s move on to my wife and me. We had our first child early in our marriage, less than a year in, and the PP folks would have said “That’s too soon, enjoy a couple years of married life first…”
If we had taken that advice, we would not have our wonderful eldest daughter, now in grad school, studying for her master’s degree, making us proud every day. We had our second child just over a year after her, and the PP crowd would have said “That’s too soon after the last one! You don’t want two babies at the same time, then two toddlers at the same time, my gosh, that’s too much, too hard to deal with.” PP would have told us to abort that second one, and have another later. But she is a recent college grad, with a biomolecular engineering degree, now in the workforce and newly engaged to be married.
Two years later, we found we were expecting our third. The PP crowd would say, “Lose that one… you don’t want three little kids at once… two toddlers and a newborn, that’s crazy. Too much work. You’ll be married a long time, you can have more later.” But our son is in college now, with as bright a future ahead of him as is the future ahead of his sisters. I can’t imagine my life without these three wonderful, smart, funny, talented kids.
But let’s not stop yet. Let’s go back further.
My grandfather came over from Italy in the early 1920s. He settled in Milwaukee to teach music, and married a German girl from Port Washington, the sister of one of his accordion pupils.
Pops got a cool job – conducting the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra – around when they had their first child, my Aunt Nina. But it was a small city, and symphonies are expensive… Who could be sure that job would last? The PP crowd, if they had been around, would have said “Don’t have that first child; your situation is too shaky. Wait a few years, until you’re working for a more stable employer.”
Luckily, the PP crowd wasn’t there to give that advice, and my aunt was born. She went on to grow up, attend DePaul, marry a great guy, and establish the Red Barn Theatre of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, which has brought joy to hundreds of thousands of people over the past sixty years. If she hadn’t been born, that wonderful theatre troupe would not exist, nor would her five talented children, or her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Soon after my aunt was born, the Depression hit, and that orchestra shut down. Pops found a job as a music teacher in the Milwaukee Public Schools, and went back to teaching some piano and accordion on the side.
Less than two years into the Depression, Pops and Gram had their second child. Being a poor immigrant during a Depression is no time to have children, is it? The PP crowd – if they had been around then, advocating their warped idea of family planning – would have said “No, definitely not… abort this second one; wait for this awful Depression to end before you have a second kid.”
But my grandparents could never have another kid; this second was their last pregnancy.
And that second kid was my Dad, born in 1931, the finest man, best father, and most talented actor I’ve ever known. And he grew up to be the father of two.
As we explore the history of just this perfectly normal family (in this respect, at least), we cannot fail to realize something:
There is rarely a perfect time to have a child.
Life is full of challenges, both financial and emotional, some within our control, but most, completely outside our control. If we take the negative, pessimistic view, waiting for the perfect time to do this, or to do anything at all, we will hide in the corner, in a fetal position, and never have children at all.
And perhaps that is what the PP crowd hopes for.
…because the PP crowd belongs to the Malthusian view, the conviction that this world is terribly overpopulated, and we must discourage procreation whenever possible, at all costs.
So it is that tens of millions of American children have been killed in the womb, over these bloody 47 years since the Roe v. Wade decision.
These weren’t all parents who were opposed to children, or who even believed in PP’s theory that the world is overpopulated. They were just people, for the most part, who believe the idea they’ve been told: that if this doesn’t feel like the perfect time, then you can always try again. These are people who were open to the tempting view that abortion is no big deal, that you can always have a do-over, a year or two or five later.
But you can’t always try again.
Some couples try for decades, and are never lucky enough to be blessed with a pregnancy… Some are blessed with pregnancies, but they don’t all make it, and parents suffer the heartbreak of miscarriages. The idea of intentionally terminating a pregnancy, on purpose, just because it’s inconvenient, or because some social worker thinks it’s not the perfect time for you, is a horrifying concept, when you think about it.
And this brings us to PP’s goal: to ensure that we don’t think about it.
They dominate the pop culture; they dominate the political debate; they dominate the education system. Too often, they dominate the neighborhoods as well.
So, you don’t think about it, you just grow up accepting the idea that abortion is natural… that it’s the logical use of modern technology to make your life perfect.
In the end, we must accept the inescapable fact that “family planning” is a lie… Perhaps the most serious of all the many lies of the abortion debate.
Yes, you can always claim that “this isn’t the best time”… but you simply cannot be sure that there will be a better time, or that there will even be another chance. Children are more important than the convenience that the PP crowd wants us to value above them.
There is a reason why, in pre-Cana training and in our marriage vows, we married couples commit to accept children lovingly from God, not to resist the blessing when a couple is lucky enough to discover they are expecting.
Oh, for the days when “family planning” just meant getting married and building a house with a nursery, in anticipation of blessings to come, before the politics of the Left got involved, before the zeitgeist of the nihilists took over our country and so much of our world.
Copyright 2020 John F Di Leo
John F Di Leo is an International trade compliance trainer, writer and actor… He has been writing for Illinois Review for 11 years now.
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