“To my fellow white women, we have got to do better. It is not up to women of color to save this country from itself. That’s on all of us,” declared Planned Parenthood chief Cecile Richards at the Women’s March in Las Vegas this past Saturday.
With a “power-to-the-polls” theme, similar gatherings across the country focused on registering voters and encouraging women to run for elected office in November’s midterm elections (but let’s be honest, scores of attendees were there to protest against President Donald Trump simply because they don’t like him).
Data from the University of Denver and the University of Connecticut suggest the women’s events held last weekend drew up to 2.5 million people. Women (and men) protested mostly on behalf of left-wing causes — a plan for DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), transgender rights, reproductive rights, and more.
The reproductive rights angle is getting a great deal of play on college campuses right now.
The University of Arizona’s (UA) Women’s Center is encouraging college students to fight for “reproductive justice,” as a piece in Campus Reform made clear — by joining the school’s Planned Parenthood club, called VOX, an acronym for Voices for Planned Parenthood, an advocacy group founded by students.
Recently released annual reports from Planned Parenthood reveal that 321,384 abortions were performed in 2016-2017 — a slight decrease from the 328,348 abortions the year before. But since 2006, the number of abortions by the behemoth provider has increased by nearly 11 percent annually.
At the University of Arizona, VOX is recognized as an official campus action group of Planned Parenthood. It began in 2015 and was adopted by the university’s Women’s Center shortly thereafter.
“We are always looking for individuals who are motivated to help us in our fight for reproductive justice,” reads the club’s landing page on the Women’s Center website.
Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider — yet VOX makes no mention of its stance on abortion.
One definition of “reproductive justice” links reproductive rights with social, political and economic inequalities that affect a woman’s ability to access reproductive health care services. Core components of “reproductive justice,” as declared by this group, include equal access to safe abortion, affordable contraceptives, and comprehensive sex education, along with freedom from sexual violence.
Ambiguously, Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion provider — yet VOX makes no mention of its stance on abortion. Emails to Teresa Brett, UA Women’s Center interim director, inquiring about VOX’s position on the procedure, were not returned.
Related: Why Roe v. Wade Is Still a Black Mark on American Society
Still, the Women’s Center website offers a clue about the framework in which VOX operates.
“We are a part of a broader social movement that dismantles oppressive structures and unifies people,” it says.
“We work to build a community that acknowledges and supports resistance to racism, classism, sexism, ableism and heterosexism.”
Related: Five Things Liberals Don’t Want American Women to Know About Abortion
Allow this author to invoke a sentence or two from “Big Agenda” by David Horowitz: “The societal transformation that progressives hope to engineer begins in our universities and schools.”
He adds, “For nearly half a century, leftists have been working to turn liberal colleges into indoctrination and recruitment centers for left-wing causes.”
And now the University of Arizona, for partnering with Planned Parenthood, is part of that ominous success story.
Elizabeth Economou is a freelance writer based in Seattle, Washington.
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