Planned Parenthood Prayer Breakfast Planned
Posted March 23, 2007
First Latina Methodist Bishop will be a featured panelist...
For Planning Purposes Contact: Andrea Hagelgans, 212-261-4652
“Religion, Politics and Reproductive Justice”
Planned Parenthood Annual Conference to Host Interfaith Prayer Breakfast
Los Angeles, CA — Thursday morning, March 29, the Planned Parenthood interfaith prayer breakfast will bring together religious leaders from different faiths and denominations in support of women’s health and reproductive rights.
As part of the interfaith prayer breakfast program, a plenary examining the intersection of religion and politics in reproductive rights will feature panelists Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño, the first Hispanic woman to be elected to the episcopacy of The United Methodist Church, and Rev. Peter Laarman, executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting, a fast-growing ecumenical network of individuals and congregations headquartered in Los Angeles.
Panel topics to be explored include:
- why clergy view support for reproductive justice as an integral part of a social justice ministry
- strategies for providing space in the public square for religious views without allowing public policy to be dictated by the religious views of any one group
- the implications of the move of some Evangelicals to the left on issues of global warning and poverty
WHO: Bishop Minerva G. Carcaño, Bishop of the Phoenix Episcopal Area, Desert Southwest Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church
Rev. Peter Laarman, Executive Director, Progressive Christians Uniting
Cecile Richards, President, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA)
Rev. Tom Davis, Chair, PPFA Clergy Advisory Board
Rev. Michael Smith, Recipient, Reverends Davis Distinguished Service Award
WHEN: Thursday, March 29, 2007
8:00 a.m.–10:00 a.m.
WHERE: Sheraton Universal
Universal City, CA
MEDIA ACCESS: Due to the early hour of the event, working media may credential for this event on Wednesday by contacting:
Andrea Hagelgans, 646-369-8617
Erin Kiernon, 202-360-1198
Planned Parenthood reserves the right to refuse entry at its discretion.
For a complete list of Planned Parenthood Annual Conference events, please contact the PPFA national media department at 212-261-4650 or 202-973-4882.
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Planned Parenthood Federation of America is the nation's leading sexual and reproductive health care advocate and provider. We believe that everyone has the right to choose when or whether to have a child, and that every child should be wanted and loved. Planned Parenthood affiliates operate more than 860 health centers nationwide, providing medical services and sexuality education for millions of women, men, and teenagers each year. We also work with allies worldwide to ensure that all women and men have the right and the means to meet their sexual and reproductive health care needs.
Comments
Margaret Sanger was indeed a supporter of eugenics, as were thousands of other prominent people in our less than enlightened nation a hundred years ago. And they were all wrong, as was Hitler, who took the concept to its illogical conclusion.
But Planned Parenthood remains at the forefront of the battle to disseminate information about family planning, sixty years after the Supreme Court gave women the right to choose birth control.
It is unfair to accuse the modern organization of promoting eugenics, though. It disseminates information and birth control devices to all people without discrimination. It is one of the few organizations that I support.
Ok, Margaret Sanger had her moments, but the belief that women should have some say in when they have children is hardly eugenic. Many of us hold that it is a moral good to plan pregnancies as much as possible, in order to responsibly care for the children one creates.
If every person who is against legalized abortion and readily available and affordable contraception would adopt one foster child, then they'd have a moral leg to stand on.
In light of Al Mohler's recent thoughts on genetics, I wonder what he would think of your discussion of Margaret Sanger?
Prester John, how is it you always think of these connections before I do?
Well, Caleb, I must admit that the applied biologist in me has seized on Mohler's little essay sort of like a pit bull. Until Mohler, nobody I ever knew in the conservative religious community (myself included for many years) would ever admit that there could be such a thing as sexual orientation. It had to be a clear choice between good and evil and everybody who didn't think exactly like they did had listened to Satan and chosen the evil, or else the entire system just didn't add up. Even though Mohler is still trying to maintain his community's traditional stance on the issue, his admission that contemporary scientific research on the issue just MIGHT be right is a real breakthrough that I don't think conservatives can now ever entirely make go away. In other words, Mohler has now dropped the issue on the floor in plain sight, and they just don't have a rug big enough to sweep it under.
Ah, yes. Onward and forward to create the America Margaret Sanger once said she wanted: "A nation of thoroughbreds." With the advent of genetic science the future she (and Adolph Hitler) wanted is within our grasp. Better that America be the home of the "Master Race" than some other country.