Planned Parenthood Great Rivers’ new CEO: Abortion is about ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’

Planned Parenthood Great Rivers — an affiliate with locations in the cities of St. Louis, Springfield, and Rolla in Missouri, as well as in Fairview Heights, Illinois — has announced a new CEO, who recently argued (to no one’s surprise) that access to abortion is an issue of “democracy” and “reproductive freedom.”

New CEO Margot Riphagen was formerly the affiliate’s VP of External Affairs, worked at NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri (now Abortion Action Missouri), and led the coalition of pro-abortion organizations that successfully supported Missouri’s pro-abortion Amendment 3, which is likely to undo the safety laws surrounding state abortion facilities. These laws — dubbed ‘TRAP’ laws (“targeted regulation of abortion providers”) — include a 72-hour waiting period between meeting with the abortionist and undergoing an abortion, an informed consent requirement including a sonogram and a statement to be signed by the woman, a requirement for abortion businesses to be licensed as ambulatory surgical centers, and a regulation requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. The laws also require abortion facilities to be located within 30 miles of a hospital and submit all aborted baby body parts to a pathologist. In addition, the abortionist who initially sees the patient would have to be the one who commits the abortion.

All of these speak to informed consent, safety, and continuity of care — but the abortion industry, which claims abortion is “health care” — is having none of it.

In an interview with NPR released on Monday, Riphagen noted that despite the passage of Amendment 3, abortions are still not being carried out in the state because of “the state’s burdensome licensing requirements.” However, she said, the “state-of-the-art” Planned Parenthood location “just across the river” in Fairview Heights, Illinois, is ready and willing to commit abortions on women from Missouri.

While Riphagen said she believes that the “will of the people” will ultimately prevail and abortions will resume in Missouri, she is concerned about politicians passing pro-life legislation. She added, “It’s the endless shenanigans of the Missouri legislature that will continue to be an obstacle and we will continue to fight until we do break that Republican supermajority, until we are able to be in a place where the will of the people truly is respected, because for us, this is also a democracy issue, right? The people have spoken. Let’s move forward.”

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Immoral acts are always immoral

Immoral acts don’t become moral because of a vote.

Induced abortion — the direct and intentional killing of preborn children — is always wrong, always immoral. No amount of supposed voter support can change this. While Riphagen believes Missouri voters want expanded abortion access, the truth is that even most “pro-choice” Americans do not agree with the unlimited access abortion that Planned Parenthood is pushing for.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.”

Planned Parenthood as an organization wants abortion to be available and legal at any time for any reason, as do the other major pro-abortion organizations. It’s not surprising, since they financially profit from it. But individuals throughout the U.S., even those who support Planned Parenthood, seem to feel otherwise.

According to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from May 2024, a growing number of Americans identifying as “pro-choice” want restrictions on abortion. The poll showed that as gestational age increases, support for abortion decreases. It revealed that 57% of respondents feel abortion should be “legal in all or most cases” (a vague and subjective idea), and yet, when asked about support or opposition to a national law allowing abortion through “viability” (specifically defined by the poll as 24-28 weeks), just 27% of the original 57% who said abortion should be “legal in most cases” indicated support for a law allowing abortion up until 24 weeks, while 71% opposed it.

In addition, respondents who said abortion should be legal at least some of the time were asked whether or not they would support a national law allowing abortion “only in cases to save the life of the mother, rape or incest.” An astounding 74% said “yes” they would support a law allowing abortion only to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest, while 24% said no, they wouldn’t support such a law.

A Pew Research Center poll carried out the same month found that 54% of Americans agree with the statement that “the decision about whether to have an abortion should belong solely to the pregnant woman.” However, those who believe abortion “should be legal in all cases” accounted for just 25% of those polled.

A mission to expand abortion

Missouri currently protects most preborn children from abortion. A Missouri poll preceding the election found that 56% of respondents believe that law to be “too strict.” In November, Missouri voters passed Amendment 3 — an extreme measure, by any standard — by a thin margin of 52% to 48%.

Despite the 4% margin and the fact that polling shows most “pro-choicers” don’t support abortion throughout pregnancy, Planned Parenthood and Riphagen still maintain that unrestricted abortion is what the people want.

“We will continue to listen to the voters, listen to the people of Missouri for what they truly need. Because it is about expanding access. It is about making sure that we are able to open our doors,” she said.

But what if it wasn’t what they truly wanted — as polls suggest? What if the law is far more extreme than most people support?

As MLK Jr. explained, “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.” Women aren’t the ones who are oppressed, and abortion isn’t freedom. The nation’s largest oppressor of preborn children is the abortion industry with its leader, Planned Parenthood, which targets them for death by deeming them ‘unwanted’ and ‘inconvenient’ and by insisting that women are empowered by the ‘right’ to kill.

Those most oppressed by abortion — preborn children — can’t demand their freedom and their rights. They require others to demand their rights for them.

Riphagen all but ignored the NPR reporter, Sarah Fentem, who asked if Planned Parenthood “needs to make concessions to more conservative politicians and officials” when it comes to laws surrounding abortion. Riphagen simply replied that Planned Parenthood will “continue to fight to reopen our doors for abortion access in the state of Missouri.”

Regardless of what the people really want.

Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:

Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!