I recently read a very interesting (and completely non-political) book titled, How to Persuade People Who Don’t Want to be Persuaded. The book lays out how to pitch your ideas in order to win people over. One of the methodologies is called the transformation mechanism. To quote the book, “A Transformation Mechanism highlights your critical point and presents it to the listener in a way impossible to miss. The mechanism is a learning lesson done up as an intriguing demonstration.”
We are assailed with these messages continuously throughout the day in order to encourage us to purchase certain products or support particular ideas. However, when choosing these messages, one should always take a moment to have some self-reflection; if not, the result may be a mismatch of message and business model.
A great example is the current situation at the border where the children of illegal immigrants are being briefly separated from their parents while they are processed for crossing over into the US. Since this came to light, both the media and the politicians have been going after the Trump administration with reckless abandon.
From a political standpoint, I understand their reasoning as the images this story conveys are graphic. I am clearly not stating that I support these claims, as the facts are far from complete or accurate, but I do understand why the left would use the optics of these actions. Yet, when choosing allies to help promote the cause, I would probably recommend against Planned Parenthood (PP).
To help celebrate Father’s Day this year, PP tweeted:
In our hearts and minds today: all of the fathers and parents who have been separated from their children at borders. Keep families together. #FathersDay
art: Repeal Hyde Art Project pic.twitter.com/7NPiyXlL7z
— Planned Parenthood (@PPFA) June 17, 2018
The irony in this tweet is so over the top I fail to see how Planned Parenthood failed to recognize it.
Let’s start with the organization even mentioning Father’s Day. Father’s Day is a day set aside for honoring the men who are raising children. How can this organization even pretend to support fathers? When a woman comes into a PP clinic for abortion services, are the concerns of the father ever questioned? No. In fact, I found this snippet from the PP website.
Question – “[M]y girlfriend is pregnant at 15 and I just turned 17…what are my rights as the father of the child?”
Answer – “It all depends on what your girlfriend decides to do. If a pregnant young woman decides to have an abortion, she can make that decision without talking with her partner.”
Having Planned Parenthood weigh in on parenting in any way is counter-intuitive. Just last year, PP filed suit against Indiana and Kentucky due to state laws requiring parental consent prior to minors receiving abortions. How exactly are they supportive of parents?
Then there is the fact that an organization which last year alone performed 321,384 abortions is actually talking about family togetherness. Planned Parenthood, an organization that last year physically ripped over 300k unborn children from the wombs of their mothers is lecturing the government on keeping families together?
Don’t get me wrong, in this case I actually agree with the organization. Families should be kept together whenever possible. Yet, I believe that, as a general rule, abortions are wrong and tear families apart. I also strongly believe that partial birth abortions (which PP still reportedly does) are always wrong minus when there are complications directly threatening the life of the mother. So, if PP really is concerned about keeping families together they should probably look internally first. However, with all that being said, when you bring a family illegally into a country then it is by your actions alone that your children are ripped from you.
In closing I think that PP should probably keep to what it is good at—abortions, ripping families apart emotionally, and the destruction of parental rights.
