Planned Parenthood’s Propaganda to Keep its Public Subsidies

The 2024 budget bill is currently under review in Parliament. On this occasion, Family Planning has complained about calls to cut the public funding it receives. Nicolas Bauer responded with an opinion piece in Valeurs Actuelles (28/11/2023), particularly denouncing the "wokeness" of Family Planning. Following this opinion piece, reproduced below, the Twitter account of Pauline Moszkowski-Ouargli, the communication manager at Family Planning, was deleted.

The president of Planned Parenthood, Sarah Durocher, was interviewed by the Finance Committee of the National Assembly as part of the examination of the 2024 budget bill. This allowed her, for over an hour, to request additional financial support from the state for Planned Parenthood. Currently, this association does not publish consolidated accounts, but its public subsidies are estimated at €2.8 million annually, provided by the state and local authorities. Sarah Durocher, however complained about the "calls to remove funding from Planned Parenthood."

The hearing was organized by the La France insoumise (LFI) deputy Éric Coquerel, Chair of the Finance committee. He provided a platform for Sarah Durocher, who showed readiness to do anything to defend the public subsidies of Planned Parenthood.

Lies and Exaggerations

Sarah Durocher did not hesitate to lie and exaggerate. According to her, "anti-choice" organizations (i.e., opposed to abortion) would receive "a lot of funding." Planned Parenthood would "obviously not measure up" to such funding. The bigger the lie, the more it is acceptable. The budget of pro-life associations comes exclusively from individual donations. That of the website ivg.net, often criticized by Planned Parenthood, amounts to €80,000, including €50,000 in emergency aid to pregnant women.

Sarah Durocher also claimed that Planned Parenthood is currently assisting women who have put "bleach in the vagina, in France, because they did not have access to abortion." While over 200,000 voluntary abortions have been performed annually for thirty years, abortion would not be sufficiently accessible. Women would only have the choice between the coat hanger, knitting needle, and bleach. To address this, Sarah Durocher is again requesting an extension of the abortion deadline, which has already increased from 12 to 14 weeks of pregnancy in 2022.

Sarah Durocher also used her intervention before the Finance committee to advocate for the inclusion of abortion in the French Constitution. She asserts that Planned Parenthood has been "supporting the constitutionalization [of abortion] since 1975," the year the Veil Law decriminalizing abortion was enacted. However, this statement is factually incorrect. While the demand for constitutionalization is indeed longstanding, it gained prominence in the 1970s primarily in the United States and socialist Yugoslavia. In France, the introduction of the debate on the constitutionalizing of abortion began in the 2010s.

Wokeness and Support for Hamas

Regarding the "calls to remove funding from Planned Parenthood," Sarah Durocher failed to mention the reason. These calls followed the 2022 communication campaign titled "At Planned Parenthood, we know that men can also be pregnant." The poster featured a drawing of two men, one "pregnant," sitting on a couch. It targeted an audience of young people aged 10 to 15. Many personalities, such as philosopher Élisabeth Badinter and former Health Minister Jean-François Mattei, had signed a column in Le Point, " Planned Parenthood : our taxes, their disinformation."

The "pregnant man" poster is not an isolated incident. Planned Parenthood seems to be embracing a woke ideology. The Finance committee members witnessed this trend when Sarah Durocher opted for what is termed as "inclusive" language and advocated for "LGBTQIA+" sexualities. A closer look at her recent tweets reveals that this woke approach extends further. Sarah Durocher frequently shares posts on X (formerly Twitter) from LFI, as well as expressing support for euthanasia, migrants, and anti-Israel perspectives. Notably, she even reposts content from Éloïse Bouton, a former FEMEN activist convicted in 2013 for indecent exposure and urinating on the altar of a Parisian church.

Posts on X reposted by Sarh Durocher, President of Planned Parenthood.

Accounts associated with officials of Planned Parenthood also align with far-left causes: advocating for the wearing of the abaya in schools, supporting the demands of the Adama Traoré Committee, advocating for the legalization of prostitution, and openly endorsing Hamas, among others. The continuation of this list can easily be guessed by readers of Valeurs Actuelles. These causes make Planned Parenthood an extension of LFI (La France Insoumise). It is because of this "LFI-ization" of Planned Parenthood that its subsidies are being questioned, even by pro-abortion feminists like Élisabeth Badinter.

Posts on X by Pauline Moszkowski-Ouargli, Communication Officer at Planned Parenthood.

Relevant Questions from MPs

Among Finance committee members, around fifteen MPs spoke. They praised the work of Planned Parenthood. However, three them raised pertinent questions. MP Fabien Di Filippo (The Republicans) mentioned having read Planned Parenthood's guides on sex education and expressed concern about what was proposed for "very young children." Sarah Durocher denied the issue. MP Félicie Gérard (Horizons) raised concerns about the scourge of pornography for minors. Sarah Durocher responded that, for Planned Parenthood, "prohibition for the sake of prohibition does not work."

MP Émilie Bonnivard (The Republicans) advocated for a policy of preventing abortions. She spoke "as a woman" to assert that abortion "is never a trivial act, whether medical or surgical, even worse," that it "marks women in their bodies," and therefore, "it is always better not to resort to it." MP Marina Ferrari (MoDem) also expressed concern about the record of 234,300 abortions reached in 2022. Sarah Durocher responded that "abortion is not a problem for Planned Parenthood," but "a solution."

Let us hope that these four MPs, considering Sarah Durocher's responses, dare to promote a reduction in funding for Planned Parenthood. This public money could be redirected to associations helping mothers in difficulty to keep their babies.