Planned Parenthood on Answering Children About Babies: "Answer Honestly... 'A Baby Grows In A Mother’s Belly'"

    Planned Parenthood is the country's de facto mouthpiece and leading advocate for unrestricted access to abortion from conception to just before birth. So it is rather jarring that the recommended answer for parents who wish "to answer honestly" their child's question "Where do babies come from?" is "A baby grows in a mother’s belly..." [Note: Katie Yoder first reported on this in December 2018 at National Review online which I discovered after running across this material on Planned Parenthood's website.]
    While Planned Parenthood is best known as an abortion provider, the organization itself tends to downplay that aspect of its services as a relatively small 3.4%. In addition to its other health services, Planned Parenthood also styles itself as an authoritative source for education about sex and pregnancy. The very first menu on the organization's website banner is "Learn" with submenus on various aspects of "sexual and reproductive health."
    In addition to abortion, cancer, birth control, and other health topics, the website devotes an entire section to helping parents educate their children about "sex, puberty & relationships." While Planned Parenthood makes what it considers age-appropriate distinctions in the level of detail shared with children, honesty and openness is stressed ("open and factual discussions") from the youngest ages up through older teens. The materials shuns euphemisms and discourages calling body parts anything other than their accurate anatomical names.
    When it comes to pregnancy, however, Planned Parenthood reverts back to a more traditional description that conflicts with the usual public characterization of an unborn child as just "part of a woman's body." In the section for ages 5-8 entitled "How do I talk with my elementary school aged child about pregnancy and reproduction?", there is no suggestion that what is inside the mother is anything other than a baby. Emphasis has been added to the excerpts here:

If a 5 year old asks, “Where do babies come from?” you can say, “A baby grows in a mother’s belly and comes out of her vagina.” That may be all it takes to satisfy their curiosity. 

If they ask, “How does the baby get in the mother’s belly?” you can answer while still being age-appropriate — you don’t necessarily need to describe all the details of penis-in-vagina sex. For example, you can say “Most women have tiny eggs in a special part of their belly. Most men have very tiny seeds, called sperm. Sometimes, when two grownups have sex together, one grownup’s penis goes into the other’s vagina. They can make a baby if a seed and egg meet. Do you have any other questions about that?” 

As children get older, you can fold in more detail: “Sometimes during sex between 2 grownups, sperm comes out of the penis, swims up through the vagina and into the uterus, looking for an egg. If the sperm and egg meet up, it can start to grow into a baby. The baby grows in the uterus for 9 months, and then comes out through the vagina or a small cut in the stomach.”
...
As always, simple is key: you can say things like, “There are medicines people can take if they don’t want to have a baby right now,” or “There are things people can use that stop sperm from getting to an egg, so a baby can’t happen.” As they get older, you can be more specific about how birth control works to avoid pregnancy (and sometimes STDs) from sex.

    By the time children reach age 9-13, advice to parents moves away dramatically from talk of "babies" and more towards discussions of sex, STD's, and pregnancy "options." And while Planned Parenthood now suggests telling pre-teens, "This is also a good opportunity to provide basic factual information — like that legal abortion is very safe and common," there is no mention of the fate of the "baby... in a mother's belly" and how parents should navigate through what is sure to be a difficult and thorny question from their child, "But what about the baby in the mom's belly?"

Linda Sarsour at 2015 Farrakhan's 'Justice Or Else' Rally: "I'm Tired of People Asking What The 'Else' Is"

    In 2015, Linda Sarsour, self-described civil-rights activist and "every Islamophobe’s worst nightmare" spoke at Louis Farrakhan's "Justice or Else" rally in Washington DC on the 20th anniversary of Farrakhan's Million Man March.
    Referencing the title of the rally, Sarsour said, "I'm tired of people asking us what the 'else' is. You would not have to ask that question if we already had justice." The video of Sarsour's speech is available on C-Span [1:42:18].

    Sarsour, a founder of the Women's March, was introduced by Tamika Mallory, also a founder of the Women's March and the emcee of the Justice or Else event, and was preceded by Rep. Danny Davis, a Farrakhan supporter who continues to serve in Congress, and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's longtime pastor with whom Obama publicly split during Obama's 2008 run for president.
























   During her speech, Sarsour said:

We are one, sisters and brothers, and our liberation is bound up together. The same people who justify the massacre of Palestinian people and called it collateral damage are the same people who justify the murder of black young men and women. The same people who want to deport millions of undocumented immigrants are the same people who hate Muslims and want to take our right to worship freely in this country. That common enemy, sisters and brothers, is white supremacy. Let's call it what it is. We're not here to make people feel comfortable. I'm tired of people asking us what the 'else' is. You would not have to ask that question if we already had justice. We are angry, sisters and brothers. [emphasis added]

    Farrakhan himself has never been explicit about the 'else' either, but in an interview leading up to the rally, he gave some hints:

 A prescription for us is, those who kill us and seem to get away with it, we cannot allow it to continue. We must rise up and kill those who kill us outside of the law of justice and when they feel death like we feel death, when they feel pain at the burying of their dead like we feel it, then maybe we can sit down to a table and act like civilized people. [emphasis added]

   Sarsour herself made some remarks more recently regarding violence versus non-violence in the context the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

I am trained in kingian non-violence. I choose non-violence as a powerful means to change. BUT i don’t have to choose or justify violence to understand where it comes from when oppressed people see no way out. We have to be critical thinkers, advocate & present solutions.

    Sarsour continued:

Until we see both the Palestinian and Israeli people as equals than we will continue to see this cycle of violence. Don’t act surprised. Demand justice for Palestinians & let’s begin discussing peace. There’ll be no peace without justice.