Why the wealthy right hates Planned Parenthood (and it has nothing to do with abortions)

Why the wealthy right hates Planned Parenthood (and it has nothing to do with abortions)

Do you wonder why the Republicans have made de-funding Planned Parenthood such a high priority?  The outrage over abortion seems overdone, given that it’s coming from people who generally love wars, adore guns and champion capital punishment.  Do these people really care that much about the unborn?

No.  They don’t.  Abortion is a red herring, a righteous rallying point for those who want to control the reproductive choices of women. Especially poor women.  They want to keep them poor, and they want them to keep cranking out babies who will grow up to fill the ranks of the impoverished labor pool. 

There are two important factors that influence family size decisions: economic stability and education. We know what happens when wealth is more evenly distributed.  Think of Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy.  When people rise above poverty, they tend to have smaller families.  People with resources to invest in their offspring are inclined to limit the number of offspring they have.  Some countries are even experiencing negative population growth.  Great for the planet, awful for the cancer of wealth through growth. People with nothing are likely to have more offspring.  They have few resources to devote to their offspring, so they produce more offspring, perhaps in hopes that one of them will make it.

Educating the poor, giving them access to information about reproductive options, is another way to reduce the birth rate, and the power brokers hate it. They do not want the workers to have access to reproductive counseling, birth control, and sex education.  No, they want a world divided between the haves and the have-nots, and they want lots and lots of have-nots to tote their bales and haul their barges.  Abortion?  Do you really think the billionaires care about some poor woman’s fetus?  No.  They only care that there are enough malleable workers to do their bidding. 

A great labor pool, eager to compete for low wages, is what the moneyed class wants. They do not want an even distribution of wealth, or even a strong middle class.  That would diminish their pool of cheap labor and increase costs, reducing profits.

Planned Parenthood is a stumbling block to furthering the income disparity in this country, and the Republican field bosses are cracking their whips and brandishing their torches. It is a strategy driven solely by greed, and unfortunately, supported by many otherwise good people who follow their religious and political leaders down a hallway to their doom.   The powerful have us by our reproductive organs, and they’re doing everything they can to hang on.