MUSHROOMS ARE ONE OF NATURES MARVELS

It has been so long since we have hade a decent rainfall in the Corpus Christi area that many people have forgotten the appearance of those little white mushrooms which can spring up overnight in one’s lawn.

What is so marvelous about those mushrooms is that for every one you see in your lawn there is a network of fungi under the surface of your lawn which produced the mushroom.  For every mushroom there may be ten square feet of fungi tentacles that spread octopus-like in every direction supporting that one mushroom which is the ‘flower’ of the mushroom fungus colony.

Planned Parenthood International is like that mushroom.

For ever Planned Parenthood clinic or center which springs up in a community, there is a network of tentacles which have spread out through the community providing support and ‘official status’ for the clinic or center.

The activities of Planned Parenthood in our public schools is a good example of the kinds of tentacles which are spread throughout our community like the branches of the fungus producing the mushroom in our lawn.

Here is a report from Kathy Ostrowski, head of Pro-Life Activities in Kansas and leader of STOPPP (STOP PLANNED PARENTHOOD):

Pro-lifers fighting PP’s sex ed programs in Corpus Christi

We have seen great success against PP in Texas. We have reported on the 19 PP facilities that have shut down in the Panhandle and the seven clinics in El Paso whose doors are now closed.

Now STOPPers in Corpus Christi, Texas, are laying the groundwork to fight PP’s sex education programs in the schools. By following STOPP’s plan to research PP funding, the Corpus Christi group uncovered a long list of schools in which Planned Parenthood is active.

Therese Perez, of the South Texas STOPP affiliate, wrote the following:

Some very interesting information has come our way concerning Planned Parenthood here in Corpus Christi and schools that collaborate with them.

This information comes directly from Planned Parenthood’s 2008 contract with the Nueces County Hospital District.

The contract reads that these schools make “Contributions/Services” to the “Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative” by providing to Planned Parenthood in each of these schools, “facility and participants.”

Planned Parenthood of South Texas is in the following local schools.

Baker Middle School
Banquete High School
Calallen High School
Carroll High School
CCISD Alternative High School
Collegiate High School
Cullen Middle School
Cunningham Middle School
Driscoll Middle School
Evans Elementary
Gibson Elementary
Grant Middle School
Hamlin Middle School
Hattie Martin Elementary-Robstown
King High School
Lamar Elementary
Lotspeich Elementary-Robstown
Martin Middle School
Miller High School
Moody High School
Ray High School
Richard Milbourne Academy
Robstown High School
San Pedro Elementary
Seale Jr. High
South Park Middle School
Tom Browne Middle School
Tuloso Midway High School
West Oso High School
Wynn Seale Academy of Fine Arts
Zavala Elementary

That’s an amazing amount of information obtained by following our simple plan. We have described the procedure for obtaining this information in Part 2 of “STOPP International’s plan for defeating Planned Parenthood”:

• Ask for a list of all contracts between your local government and Planned Parenthood under the Freedom of Information Act.

• If you determine that there are contracts between your government and Planned Parenthood, ask for copies of all the contracts.

• You should also ask for the reports on how contract money was spent.

Once you have discovered which schools PP has infiltrated, it’s time to get them out. To read more on this, please visit: www.stopp.org/plan.htm. If you need assistance, contact us by e-mail: stopp@all.org.

****************************************

April 13, 2009 4:00 AM

Planned Parenthood Matters
The organization has a dark history and a disturbing present.

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

‘We want fewer and better children . . . and we cannot make the social life and the world-peace we are determined to make, with the ill-bred, ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens that you inflict on us.”

That ghastly message appeared in the introduction to Margaret Sanger’s 1922 book, The Pivot of Civilization.

In a little-noticed incident, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently announced that she is “really in awe” of Sanger. “The 20th-century reproductive-rights movement, really embodied in the life and leadership of Margaret Sanger, was one of the most transformational in the entire history of the human race,” Clinton declaimed upon receiving an award from the organization that Sanger founded, Planned Parenthood.

Clinton’s speech punctured the fiction that she’s a moderate — the radical organization Planned Parenthood certainly has confidence in her.

Clinton’s speech didn’t set off shock waves among the public because Planned Parenthood is about as American as apple pie at this benighted point in history. Most Democrats and even some Republicans bow at its altar. The religious metaphor is intentional: Sanger referred to a “religion of birth control” that sought to “ease the financial load of caring for with public funds . . . children destined to become a burden to themselves, to their family, and ultimately to the nation.”

According to its just-released annual report for 2007–2008, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America was responsible for conducting 305,310 abortions in the United States in 2007, an increase from 289,750 the previous year. Consider that the next time an abortion advocate tells you women are being kept from getting abortions in America. That increase in abortions provided by PPFA coincided with an increase in government funding, from $337 million to $350 million.

Does any of this sound unacceptable to you? We certainly don’t have to subsidize the largest abortion provider in the United States, one with a dark history (which Jonah Goldberg chronicles well in his Liberal Fascism) and a disturbing present.

But attempts by pro-life politicians to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood are always thwarted. Defenders of Planned Parenthood argue that the government money goes to actual family planning, not just abortions. But why does Planned Parenthood even need the U.S. Treasury when it makes a profit? Shouldn’t we at least be arguing over this?

Washington right now is more comfortable with abortion than it has been in a long time. As Hillary Clinton praises the Obama administration’s commitment to “reproductive rights,” it’s an important time for some reflection on what, exactly, that euphemism means.

Does, for instance, Roe v. Wade co-counsel Ron Weddington reflect the reproductive-rights movement? In 1992, he urged the White House to rush to get an abortion pill into the hands of American women. He argued that it will help to “start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country.”

He wrote: “Government is also going to have to provide vasectomies, tubal ligations and abortions. . . . There have been about 30 million abortions in this country since Roe v. Wade. Think of all the poverty, crime and misery . . . and then add 30 million unwanted babies to the scenario. We lost a lot of ground during the Reagan-Bush religious orgy. We don’t have a lot of time left.” Sounds a lot like the population-culling paranoia of Sanger, doesn’t it?

Pro-lifers are frequently portrayed by the Planned Parenthood crowd as heartless zealots unconcerned with the realities of women’s lives. Not only does the work of many at, say, crisis-pregnancy centers suggest otherwise, but if you pay attention to the words of Sanger and her followers, you’ll find a much more chilling disdain for the realities of lower-class life.

There are folks with good intentions on all sides of the abortion debate. But if you doubt a little scrutiny is way overdue, consider this. We have not yet hit the 100-day mark in the Obama administration and the United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA] has already been given a $50 million check from the United States. The UNFPA has been criticized for its collaboration with coerced abortion in China. But then that’s exactly what can be expected from a State Department run by a woman “really in awe” of Margaret Sanger.

PPFA’s annual report is titled “Planned Parenthood Matters.” It sure does. It’s about time we take notice.

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is the editor of National Review Online.

*****************************************************

Governments Maintain IPPF Funding Despite Financial Crisis in 2008

By Samantha Singson [Catholic Family & Human Rights Organization]

(NEW YORK – C-FAM)  The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the world’s foremost abortion provider, recently released its latest financial report which shows that the organization continues to receive the majority of its multi-million dollar budget from government grants and pay six figure salaries to dozens of its executives despite the world financial crisis.

“IPPF Financial Statements 2008” highlights the work done by IPPF and its affiliate organizations all across the globe.  In total, the organization boasts that it has provided over 24 million “contraceptive services” and over 650,000 “abortion-related services” during the reporting period.

Though the financial crisis has increasingly put pressure on governments, funding for IPPF’s activities primarily came from government donations. Of IPPF’s total income of $119 million, almost 80% of that came directly from government grants. 17 countries gave money to IPPF in 2008, with the governments of Sweden, the United Kingdom and Japan topping the list.

Additionally, $1 million in funding came from the United Nations Population Fund and the UN Program on HIV/AIDS. Charitable foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and the Hewlett Foundation also filled IPPF’s coffers with $23 million. Other prominent abortion advocacy organizations such as Population Action International and Ipas also gave significant amounts.

IPPF’s total expenditure for 2008 totaled $121.4 million. While much of that money was spent on IPPF’s five priority action areas – adolescents, abortion, access, advocacy and HIV/AIDS – a large amount was spent on staffing costs. In 2008, IPPF employed 297 staffers full-time for a cost of $23 million. Over 3 dozen individuals were paid out six figure salaries, with the top salary grossing close to $480,000 a year.

The report shows that IPPF handed out over $60 million in grants to its member associations around the world and also lists grants to “other organizations.”  The grants to these “other organizations” include hundreds of thousands of dollars to Latin American offices of “Catolicas” por el Derecho a Decidir (“Catholics” for A Free Choice), abortion-provider Marie Stopes International and Women’s Link Worldwide, a group dedicated to strategic litigation against laws protecting life globally.

According to the organization, IPPF’s tentacles reached 176 countries through 151 affiliate organizations to push abortion and contraception worldwide last year. In a survey of affiliate activities, IPPF boasts that 88.4% of its affiliates are involved in “advancing national policy and legislation on sexual and reproductive health and rights.”  82.3% of those affiliates state that they are involved in counteracting any opposition to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

IPPF is seeking to take advantage of the Obama Administration’s decision to rescind the Mexico City Policy which banned organizations from performing or promoting abortion overseas. The report outlines the organization’s plans for 2009 which include: pushing its “Declaration of Sexual Rights,” a document which declares that governments are obligated to guarantee a sweeping definition of “sexual rights,” including abortion, “sexual freedom” and “comprehensive sexuality education.”  This year, IPPF will also focus on using the events surrounding the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development – also known as the “Cairo Conference” – to advocate for abortion at the United Nations.