Published one hour after Tuesday’s disturbing revelations that Planned Parenthood is selling off body parts of aborted babies at its highest organizational levels, it would’ve been easy to miss Cosmopolitan’s most recent attempt to discredit pregnancy help organizations.
And yet, thanks to funding from the multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation and McArthur Foundation, an article parading itself as “investigative journalism” will be included in the magazine’s August 2015 print edition.
The print edition, which features a busty image of Sex in the City’s Sarah Jessica Parker and the words, “Hot Summer Sex” in bold font, also contains the latest piece (here) from quasi-investigative reporter Meaghan Winter.
Winter, whose year-long “investigation” of pregnancy help organizations yielded its initial published content at Cosmopolitan.com in early April, followed up with an aggressively anti-pregnancy center piece at Slate.com in June.
Wedged in with ads from makeup companies and stories focusing on “Love,” “Celebs,” and “Beauty,” Tuesday’s article is tagged with the provocative headline, “What Some Pregnancy Centers Are Really Saying to Women With Unplanned Pregnancies”.
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Complete with its vacuous sub-headline, “Pregnancy centers market themselves as sweet grannies and medical pros offering impartial advice in a crisis. A yearlong investigation found something else”, the main thing missing in the article is an answer to the very question its headline asks.
(In case you’re curious, this little gem of research is found on page 192, after articles entitled, “So Hot Right Now,” How Safe is Your Nail Salon?” “Love & Sex & Weed,” and “You’re invited to a special Bachelor Party”—you know… the important stuff.)
The main pieces of “evidence” Winter presents to try and discredit life-affirming pregnancy help organizations throughout the article are hearsay at best, including the yarn of a pregnancy center’s staff stopping a pregnant mother from carrying out her wishes of placing her child for adoption.
While trotting out the predicable allegations—dismissing the physical and emotional dangers of abortion and the proven failure rate of condoms as “common myths”—the article does very little besides proving that most pregnancy help organizations are led by Christians.
Tweet This: #Cosmo article "exposes" nothing but bad timing. #PPSellsBabyParts
Shocking as that newsflash may be to the serious readership of Cosmopolitan, what is even more shocking is the unintended timing of the article’s publication, coming within an hour of the Center for Medical Progress’ release of video evidence from Planned Parenthood’s top medical director caught in the act of selling body parts from aborted babies.
For all its failures in the facts, at least the article contains irony. For instance, Winter recounts a conversation she had with a local pastor who teaches sexual integrity as part of one PHO’s services, she quotes him as stating, “We teach that even the way a girl dresses can draw a guy to think about [sex].”
While this conversation is clearly included in the story to draw the reader’s ire and eye-roll, this same issue features a scantily clad actress with the words, “Hot Summer Sex” written just below her chest.
Tweet This: #Cosmo article spins its own accidental irony. #PPSellsBabyBarts #prolife
A question: If Winter believes that clothing—or lack thereof—has nothing to do with thinking about sex, isn't it high time her magazine’s layout editor talks with her about the birds and the bees?
While Winter bemoans the funding of pregnancy centers and the 11 states who provide funding to centers for aid, including “food, clothing, and furniture,” she fails to compare the vast chasm between the $75 million Congress set aside for abstinence-based sex education to the $1.5 billion (with a “b”) the federal government handed out to Planned Parenthood between 2010-12.
This to an organization—Planned Parenthood—that not only butchers well over 300,000 children for profit every year, but is triple-dipping when you factor in its revenue from abortions, from the federal trough, and from the sale of body parts once belonging to living, developing human beings.
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As Winter points out in the article, pregnancy help organizations now out-number abortion facilities at a (what she estimates) 3-to-1 clip. This number is only going to rise, as Big Abortion’s massive problems continue to shock the American conscience.
Winter’s slam on pregnancy help organizations, posted just as the Abortion Goliath may be toppling before our very eyes, is another example of agenda-based “journalism.” In a sad, destructive way, the story is more laughable than anything this side of The Onion.
Yet, Winter's piece should remind us of something we’ve been saying all along: With God’s help, we are winning. We are about to end abortion as we know it.
And pregnancy help organizations, which empower women with the information, compassion, and tools to make the healthiest decision for everyone involved in an unexpected pregnancy should get ready to handle more traffic.
And we can expect the attacks to keep coming right along with our rising client base.
Attacks, we should keep in mind, are common from those who are backed into a corner.
