How do you know anti-abortion crusaders don't care about women? Listen to them

There once was a group in St. Louis called “Common Ground” that came together in the heat of the abortion wars to seek a modicum of civility between activists on both sides of the debate.

I don’t remember it lasting that long. But as one of the most outspoken pro-choice voices at the time – in the late 80s and 90s — I remember being impressed by the effort, and by some of the lofty ideals like these:

Let’s agree that unwanted pregnancies are a tragic thing. Let’s work together to reduce their occurrence. And maybe we need to figure out better access to sex education and birth control. Or better healthcare services and economic aid. And how about efforts to make adoption more viable?

What could be wrong with any of that? Nothing, really. Although the record will show that this passing flicker of consensus did not turn out to change the world.

A few decades later, the anti-abortion forces achieved their dream of obliterating a woman’s right to an abortion with the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision. Last month, SCOTUS allowed states to withhold Medicaid dollars from abortion providers — even if they’re for essential health services unrelated to abortion.

And now comes Donald Trump’s mega-bill taking the next step: blocking organizations that offer abortions from being able to accept any Medicaid funding for other reproductive health care services. That’s tied up in court for now, but with SCOTUS’s Republican majority of justices content to grovel before Trump, it’s close to a done deal.

All that made me think of Common Ground. And how heretical it would strike an anti-abortion activist today to ponder a perverse notion such as reducing unwanted pregnancies.

The venom seeped Monday from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. In response to news that Planned Parenthood might need to close up to 200 of its 600 health centers — which provide birth-control, cancer screenings and a full range of vital healthcare services to millions — Matthew Hennessey, the deputy editorial features editor, waxed eloquent:

“That is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard.”

Hennessey, a man given to devoted paeans to his own college-age daughter, just isn’t about to demean himself with concern for others like her.

“The vital healthcare claim is hogwash, and everyone knows it. Killing babies is what Planned Parenthood does, to the tune of 400,000 a year. Abortion — not Pap tests or mental health — is the reason for its existence. Take that away and Planned Parenthood is nothing more than a glorified school nurse’s office.”

That's not just a lie. It’s a stunning slander from someone who absolutely knows better. It exposes how much the vitriol is about hatred and culture war. And how little about protecting life.

It begs a brief recitation of the facts.

Over the past year, Planned Parenthood health centers provided care to 2.34 million people across the U.S., as documented in the group's most recent annual report. This includes a full range of preventive and diagnostic services — the very kind that reduce the need for abortions in the first place.

Abortion care accounted for just 3 percent of all services provided at Planned Parenthood centers. Ninety-seven percent of what Planned Parenthood does has nothing to do with abortion at all.

Planned Parenthood provided more than 4.4 million birth control services in 2023-24 — a number that includes contraceptive prescriptions, emergency contraception, and long-acting reversible contraception (LARCs), such as IUDs and implants.

Without access to affordable contraception, unintended pregnancies spike — and with them, abortions. If you think it’s a great idea to slash funding for this, then spare us the rhetoric about life.

Planned Parenthood also delivered 4.2 million STI tests and treatments, including more than 740,000 HIV tests, helping stem the tide of infections that disproportionately affect marginalized communities.

It conducted almost 500,000 cancer screenings, including Pap tests, breast exams, and HPV vaccinations. These are services that save lives, albeit for the living, a group of no consequence to those who call themselves pro-life.

That’s because — whatever animates their intensity — those who would destroy the nation’s leading women-healthcare provider have no claim whatsoever to any form of moral superiority. Their callous willingness to cause so much pain to so many others is quite a reveal.

I won’t endeavor to speculate as to what they really want. But this much is certain:

They’re not looking for common ground.