With the news that Planned Parenthood has launched aggressive attack ads against George Allen and Mitt Romney, I immediately thought of the quip of Thomas Chalmers:
“There is honor in the distinction of being disdained by the wicked and ignorant, for quoth the poet, ‘A courtier’s curses are exalted praise.'”
Planned Parenthood is the world’s oldest, largest, and best-organized provider of abortion and birth control services. From its humble beginnings around the turn of the century, when the entire shoestring operation consisted of a two-room makeshift clinic in a run-down Brooklyn neighborhood staffed by three untrained volunteers, it has expanded dramatically into a multi-billion-dollar international conglomerate with programs and activities in 134 nations on every continent. In the United States alone, it employs more than 20,000 staff personnel and volunteers in 922 clinics and 167 affiliates in every major metropolitan area, coast to coast. Boasting a national office in New York, a legislative center in Washington, regional offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, and San Francisco, and international offices in London, Nairobi, Bangkok, and New Dehli, the Federation currently earns more than $35 million per annum with more than $200 million in cash reserves and another $150 million in capital assets. With an estimated combined annual budget–including all regional and international service affiliates–of more than a trillion dollars, Planned Parenthood may well be the largest and most profitable non-profit organization in history. It is undoubtedly Abortion Inc.
Thus in truth, Planned Parenthood is the greatest of all the modern, corporatized, conglomerated courtiers. And, it is a distinct honor to be singled out for scorn by it and its brazen minions.