Vernon Parker has some ‘splainin to do.
Posted by: Donna
Paradise Valley Mayor and gubernatorial explorer Vernon Parker wrote a letter to Planned Parenthood director Bryan Howard. Parker annoyed the good folks over at PP when he lashed out at Gov. Brewer for attending a fundraiser held by “a prominent Planned Parenthood leader” and got a flood of messages by PP supporters criticizing him for attacking an organization that provides health care and services for thousands of women in Arizona.
Here’s the letter:
Dear Mr. Howard:
I write to you today to let you know that I have been in contact and have agreed to meet with members of Planned Parenthood in case you can make it. This meeting is to discuss why I strongly opposed Jan Brewer attending a fundraising event held at the home of a prominent Planned Parenthood leader.
As you are aware, I have received many letters from supporters of Planned Parenthood. They all say basically the same thing. Most letters make the case that Planned Parenthood provides needed health services to low-income women and that abortion-related services are a fraction of the overall work of Planned Parenthood. That may in fact be the case.
As I noted in my press release (enclosed), many of my supporters are pro-choice. However, I can never support your organization’s position on abortions. And, worse yet, I cannot support an organization that lobbies the legislature and courts on behalf of one of the most gruesome procedures imaginable, partial birth abortion.
Planned Parenthood has consistently lobbied against middle-of-the-road reform such as parental consent, parental notification, informed consent and a waiting period. By any reasonable standard, Planned Parenthood is far outside the mainstream of public opinion on all these issues.
I strongly believe that life begins at conception. I can’t compromise that deeply held personal value.
My press release strongly encouraged Jan Brewer to cancel the fundraiser because she was sending mixed messages. As someone who is pro-life, I would not knowingly attend a fundraiser at a home of someone who played such a prominent leadership role with your organization.
I will coordinate a time with the group that has contacted me. While our differences on these critical issues will not be resolved by meeting, I believe open and honest dialogue is in the best interests of everyone.
Sincerely,
Vernon Parker
Ugh. Every time some clueless dude starts banging on about “partial birth abortion” I want to hurl. Dying in childbirth is gruesome, Vernon. Being forced to carry a fetus to term so severely damaged that it cannot survive outside the womb because Vernon Parker thinks you should is damned gruesome. As is having your kidneys fail as a result of gestational diabetes because some ignorant moralizing busybody doesn’t think your “health” (remember McCain’s air quotes?) is a sufficient reason to terminate the pregnancy.
Believe me when I say some of the conversations I’ve had with anti-choice men about late term abortion have been jaw droppers. They really do think we women, if left up to our own devices, will wait until we are 8 months pregnant and then casually decide to terminate it because we need to fit into a prom dress or to go on a jaunt to Barbados. They truly, honestly, believe women are dumber than dirt and have the moral and ethical fortitude of alley cats.
Vernon suggests he doesn’t trust women very much when he whinges about parental notification and waiting periods, calling them “middle of the road”. Yup, it’s just like how they make men wait 24 hours and sit through a lecture before they get Viagra or a vasecto… Oh wait, they don’t. No, women are a special class of mentally and morally defective people who don’t know what they are doing when they go to the doctor and request a procedure.
Then Parker insists that his positions on waiting periods and late term abortions are “mainstream” while expecting us to ignore that he also says he believes human life begins at conception. Now that belief is not necessarily extremist, in and of itself, since a sizable percentage of Americans also hold the view that it’s a human being when the sperm meets the egg. But there’s a huge difference between having a personal opinion and wanting to legislate from it, which probably explains why initiatives to declare personhood at conception tend to fail so miserably at the polls.
Furthermore, Parker has had a long political career both nationally and locally. He has undoubtedly been exposed to some of the more extremist elements of the conservative anti-choice movement, because it is full of people like the aforementioned misogynists who think most late term abortions go to loose women who want to fit into prom dresses. It is full of nutty people who oppose contraception and comprehensive sex ed and push for laws to limit access to both. Vernon may or may not be in agreement with them. Therefore, Parker should not be allowed to pull this “I’m so middle of the road and mainstream” crapola on the issue of abortion. This guy wants to be the Governor of Arizona and he needs to be called out on his statements and asked specific questions about them. For example, does he believe that women who get abortions should be jailed if abortion is criminalized? What are his views on contraception? Which forms, if any, would he restrict and why?
America is polarized over abortion but acceptance of contraception use has wide, and mainstream, support. Anti-choice activists and politicians need to be asked about contraception, as often as possible. I’m tired of them getting a free pass by either not getting asked about it at all or being allowed to get away with weasel words and pushing the ridiculous myth that the birth control pill causes abortion.
I don’t know what the format of this meeting with Planned Parenthood will be or if it will be open to the public but I do hope that they spend as much time grilling Parker on his stances as they do attempting (probably in futility) to educate him.
6 Comments
Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI
Leave a comment
Dearest, I’ve always held if men suddenly became the bearers of children, there would be no more.
“C’mon big guy, you can get that bowling pin out of your………”
What continously makes me upset is that womens health issues are politcical fair game, yet a limp noodle (Viagra!) is okey-dokey for insurance.
Just Friday, the judge in the case ruled that Scott Roeder could try to convince the jury that he had only committed ‘voluntary manslaughter, ‘ not murder, when he drove 300 miles to Dr. Tiller’s church, resolutely walked up to him and shot him point blank in the face. The judge ruled that Dr. Tiller’s belief that he was ‘saving unborn children’ could be used as a basis for ‘voluntary manslaughter.’
Scary, because it means that now if you have an extremist political belief you can commit any crime up to and including murder and claim it is a lesser crime because you believe that there could be a good reason to murder the victim. Sort of like Mississippi, circa 1948. Does it mean that the Christmas Day bomber can now get the charges downgraded too because he thinks he was trying to kill infidels in the name of Allah?
Whoops, make that “the judge ruled that ROEDER’S belief that…”
Maybe even Hermann Goering could have escaped from Nuremberg with a slap on the wrist if he’d had Scott Roeder’s judge.
I have had an abortion. I have heard of partial birth abortions. I have friends who were told their babies were going to be totally deformed, and they were not. Please truly find out the origin of this organization before you slam someone (male or female) who is against it. I do not judge the scared young females at all, but there are alternatives. Babies are precious. Talk with a few who have tried to have one and cannot.
Your experience, and that of a few of your friends, is not universally applicable.