
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 6, 1995                   TAG: 9503080019
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: FREDRICK M. WILLIAMS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PLANNED PARENTHOOD HAS A CONFLICT

PLANNED Parenthood of the Blue Ridge has, for many years, been balancing two agendas. On the one hand was contraceptive counseling for married couples, and pap smears for women. On the other, a commitment to abortion that sought to make it a routine and publicly funded part of American life.

Between these was sexuality education, which was more or less offensive, depending on the audience. In churches, it was abstinence and parental involvement. In schools, it was condoms and do your own thing.

Balance in these circumstances meant pushing abortion and sexual radicalism in selected venues while presenting to the public the face of the selfless professional commitment to strong families and social betterment. Thus, Planned Parenthood could be the most vocal abortion-advocacy and -referral agency in Southwest Virginia, and simultaneously enjoy significant support from government, business and opinion leaders.

Occasionally, however, its high-profile involvement in the abortion debate would raise concerns. At such times, the boilerplate response was that it wasn't advocating abortion but ``reproductive choice.'' It would refer for abortions, but not do them. This evasion was never more than a fig leaf. But it did make it possible for those who didn't want to face the truth to continue supporting Planned Parenthood with something like a clear conscience.

Planned Parenthood's refusal to perform abortions, coupled with the support of influential community leaders, provided the cover necessary for United Way to keep it as a partner agency. More than once, United Way officials answered complaints about Planned Parenthood by saying that the agency didn't perform abortions, and its status with United Way would change if it began to do so.

It won't do for United Way now to argue that its funds will underwrite education, not abortion, since subsidies for education free up other funds that can be used for abortion.

But the real question is this: How can United Way continue to support an organization that has not only failed to stem the increase in unwanted pregnancies (especially among unmarried teens), but has now positioned itself to profit from its failure? Indeed, what sense can be made of funding ``pregnancy prevention'' programs of an organization that has a financial stake in the failure of those programs? Planned Parenthood has a serious conflict of interest. The United Way shouldn't be a party to it.

Perhaps as an attempt to soften the impact of its decision, Planned Parenthood noted that it would perform only 800 to 1,000 first-trimester abortions in the first year. This calculating way of putting it obscures a very important fact - that the little ones destroyed in these abortions have beating hearts, brain waves and fingerprints.

How anyone can be comfortable with that is beyond me. But somehow Planned Parenthood is. In 1988, its affiliates performed 111,000 abortions, 11 percent of which were on girls aged 17 and under. In the same year, it provided 3,400 women with prenatal care. This striking imbalance is a vivid reminder of Planned Parenthood's priorities and preferences.

Planned Parenthood in Roanoke is becoming nothing more than another abortion mill. It's long past time for United Way and all people of good will to be done with their association with this organization. Planned Parenthood will do what it wants. But we have no business corrupting the charitable impulse by allowing it to be associated with the destruction of human life.

Fredrick M. Williams, of Roanoke, is an engineer with an industrial-automation firm.

by CNB