Investigative

Former Planned Parenthood president says corporation is threatening her into silence

Planned Parenthood, Dr. Leana Wen

Planned Parenthood has a history of discriminating against and mistreating its pregnant employees; now, it seems the abortion corporation may be mistreating its pregnant former president by blackmailing her into silence.

The New York Times reports that recently fired Planned Parenthood president Leana Wen is still at odds with her former employer. Wen claims that the nation’s number one abortion profiteer is withholding her health insurance and severance pay unless she agrees to sign a confidentiality agreement — actions which Wen calls “unjust” and “unethical.”

Wen announced this week on Twitter that she is pregnant again, after having suffered a miscarriage some months back during contract negotiations with Planned Parenthood.

Leana Wen pregnancy tweet

The NYT obtained a 1,400-word letter Wen wrote this past week to Planned Parenthood’s board of directors. In it, Wen called Planned Parenthood “deeply hypocritical” in its attempt to “enforce a gag order on its immediate past President/CEO while fighting the Trump administration’s gag rule on Title X providers.”

Surprisingly, the Times pulled no punches in its characterization of Planned Parenthood’s decision to exit the Title X program. “Last month,” the Times writes, “Planned Parenthood said it was withdrawing from the federal program that provides services to poor women rather than comply with a new Trump administration rule which forbids referrals to doctors who can provide abortions.” (emphasis added) Why is this significant? Because Wen left Planned Parenthood due to what she viewed as the corporation’s overwhelming desire to focus on abortion rather than broaden its role in providing health care. The Times notes:

The board of Planned Parenthood fired Dr. Wen, 36, in July after sharp disagreements over what officials there described as her abrasive and flawed management style. Dr. Wen blamed her sacking on disagreements over her reorienting the organization further from abortion politics and more toward its role as a women’s health provider.

In her letter, Dr. Wen wrote she believed that de-emphasizing “abortion care is the best way to protect it.” “However,” she went on, “there is a vocal minority” including many national staff and board members “who prefer a stridently political, abortion-first philosophy.”

In other words, Wen has unwittingly proven the pro-life movement correct: Planned Parenthood is an abortion corporation.

READ: Former Planned Parenthood prez: They fired me for trying to make them about health care

Planned Parenthood, for its part, claims Wen’s complaints are all much ado about nothing, with the Times characterizing the complaints as a “potential distraction” for the corporation. Melanie Newman, a senior VP of communications, called Wen’s claims “unfortunate, saddening, and simply untrue,” adding that “The attorneys representing the board have made every good faith effort to amicably part from Dr. Wen, and are disappointed that they have been unable to reach a suitable resolution regarding her exit package.”

Image: Twitter

As Live Action News previously noted following Wen’s departure from Planned Parenthood, Wen seemed to be operating under some false assumptions about her employer. The first assumption was that she thought Planned Parenthood supported all pregnancy choices. The second, that Planned Parenthood actually wanted to provide health care, and the third, that Planned Parenthood wasn’t primarily political. Wen was wrong on all counts. She was not the first president to attempt to shift the corporation’s focus away from abortion — nor was she the first fired for attempting to do so.

Planned Parenthood’s history of mistreating current and former employees, along with a hyper-focus on abortion, seem to be recurring themes. The fact that a former president is even attesting to this — while still maintaining her pro-abortion position — lends credence to all other reports of such behavior. This should make every woman think twice before trusting the nation’s number one abortion business.

9/16/19: Added 9/14 tweet image from Leana Wen.

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