Attacking the Many Headed Hydra of Planned Parenthood Funding
It’s no secret Planned Parenthood receives “charitable donations” from a variety of sources. From private individuals to the federal government, millions of dollars flow to this very profitable non-profit every year. Winning the hearts and minds of individual contributors is a long-term, grassroots effort and changing government policy needs to happen at the ballot box. In between these two extremes are corporate donors.
Many private businesses give huge sums of money to Planned Parenthood.
Catholic investors curtailing their investments in these companies is not enough. The businesses generally do not notice the money we withhold and, even if they do, probably do not know why. This is one of the reasons why the USCCB asks investors to take the both/and approach: withhold your money and actively lobby for change. In keeping with the Bishops’ wishes, we began asking companies not to support Planned Parenthood.
Surprising Success in Defunding America’s #1 Abortion Provider
Given the size of Planned Parenthood and the amount of media support they receive, we knew we had our work cut out for us. Instead of arguing the cause of life per se, we took a slightly different tack and simply pointed out that abortion is a controversial issue.
At least as many people are offended by donations to Planned Parenthood as are pleased.
Many businesses saw the implication: giving money to Planned Parenthood ran a serious risk of dividing their client base and harming their bottom line. Better and safer to steer clear and give the money to a less controversial cause.
So far, we have been able to convince over 100 companies, including the world’s largest natural gas exploration company, to defund Planned Parenthood.
How many lives has this work saved? Not enough, which is why we’ll keep at it until they’re entirely defunded, at least on the corporate level.
Funding Aborted
Our campaign to defund corporate donations to Planned Parenthood has been wildly successful. Not only have we ended long-standing donor relationships, we’ve managed to head some off before they even formed.
We’ve actually succeeded in stopping companies from supporting Planned Parenthood even before they’ve given a dime.
Cutting off donations before they have been made has been even more exciting than stopping existing donors. We are aware that this may be contrary to Jesus’s teaching about the rejoicing over a sinner who repents versus a saint who never sinned, yet we can’t help but get very excited about preventing the sin in the first place.