Planned Parenthood Gift Cards?

What does every product or service based company promote during the holiday season? Gift cards of course! In the last few years gift cards have swept the nation as the newest trend on the top of everyone’s wish list. What’s not to love, the freedom to choose your own gift at your favorite store without any cash out of your wallet. Well, Planned Parenthood will not be undersold, and on November 25, 2008 Planned Parenthood of Illinois launched their new gift certificates for the holiday season. The certificates can be used for health service, contraceptives, and abortions. Many anti-abortion activists are very upset that Planned Parenthood would promote gift certificates to terminate pregnancy during a time that ‘celebrates the miraculous birth.’ Planned Parenthood said that the gift certificates were created because they feared that during the presently tough economic times, women would forfeit their health in order to pay for necessities. Only 5% of Indiana’s Planned Parenthood patients receive birth control. The gift certificates are intended to help keep women healthy during tough times, and are not focused on abortion. I think that this is just another step in crushing the taboo of women’s freedom of sexuality that has hovered over the nation for centuries. When birth control was first made publicly available during the 1960s in the US, many people, especially religious and conservative, were furious. Birth control gave women power, and offered them the possibility of choosing when and if they wanted motherhood. This then opened up the opportunity for education, developing skills, and careers. I think that Planned Parenthood is just trying to further this trend, and make the healthy lives for every woman, rich or poor, a real possibility.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-talk-planneddec03,0,3497971.story
http://religionblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/12/how-about-this-for-a-holiday-s.html