ADDICTING INFO

As the Republican war on women rages on in the form of attacking Planned Parenthood, women have a powerful ally standing by them and his name is Mark Zuckerberg.

Ever since a right-wing group released deceptively edited videos claiming that Planned Parenthood is selling fetal tissue, conservatives have thrown a giant hissy fit. Republicans in Congress are even considering shutting down the government if Democrats and President Obama refuse to acquiesce to their demand to defund Planned Parenthood.

But while Republicans attack Planned Parenthood, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is standing by women.

Not too long ago, anti-choice website LifeNews had a conniption after discovering that Zuckerberg and his wife have donated nearly a billion dollars to an organization with strong ties to one of the largest providers of women’s health services in the United States.

In 2013 the couple donated 18 million shares of Facebook valued at $992.2 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation in Mountain View, California. The couple previously donated 19 million Facebook shares to the same foundation in 2012.

…

One of the organizations Silicon Valley Community Foundation collaborates with is Planned Parenthood. A copy of their 2012 Public Disclosure is available for online viewing. The disclosure reports that the SVCF donated over $480,000 to Planned Parenthood in 2012 alone. The donations benefited Planned Parenthoods in multiple cities: San Antonio, TX; New York, NY; San Jose, CA; Jacksonville, FL; and Burlington, VT.The donations ranged in amount from $5,000 to $361,750.

Donations were earmarked under broad terms such as “health,” “supporting families,” and “building community.” The annual donations to Planned Parenthood have almost doubled from 2011, when the SVCF report shows that SVCF gave close to $250,000.

The clearly anti-choice author goes on to call on Zuckerberg to pull his support and donate his money to anti-woman right-wing organizations instead, such as Crisis Pregnancy Centers.

As for Silicon Valley Community Foundation, they should cut ties with the taxpayer-funded abortion giant and funnel donations into the hundreds of Pregnancy Resource Centers, Crisis Pregnancy centers and homes for mothers. The Silicon Valley Community Foundation currently has assets of $2.9 billion, more than 1,600 philanthropic funds under management and over 60 local nonprofit partners. One can only dream of the impact those resources could have if directed into pro-life, pro-family, pro-women organizations. Perhaps someone should write Zuckerberg a letter.

It should be noted that abortion is only three percent of the services Planned Parenthood provides and taxpayer dollars can’t be used to fund the procedure because of the Hyde Amendment. Of course, if Congress defunds Planned Parenthood, they would be preventing millions of women from getting the cancer screenings and contraceptives they need from the real medical professionals who work there. And Crisis Pregnancy Centers are not a good alternative.

The problem with Crisis Pregnancy Centers is that they are Christian right-wing operated facilities designed with the expressed purpose of stopping women from choosing an abortion or having safe sex by any means necessary. Most of the staffers who “volunteer” at these centers are not medically trained professionals and, more often than not, they will berate, lecture, and lie to the women they talk to in their effort to achieve their goals. Not only do they tell women that condoms aren’t effective at stopping sexually transmitted diseases, they claim birth control causes cancer and often preach religious beliefs to the women who are seeking help. In addition, they also lecture about abstinence-only. This right-wing scam was even caught on tape in 2013, and unlike the misleading edited Planned Parenthood videos, the recording of Crisis Pregnancy Center employees tell the whole story.

It’s doubtful that Zuckerberg would ever strip Planned Parenthood of critical funding. After all, he and his wife know how important women’s reproductive health is in this country. In a Facebook post last month, Zuckerberg announced that he and his wife Priscilla are expecting a baby girl, but he also shared how long it is taken them to conceive, revealing that over the last couple years they have suffered through three miscarriages.

Here’s a screen capture of his post via Facebook.

Let’s also keep in mind that if Republicans had their way, Zuckerberg’s wife and the wives of many of their friends would be investigated, interrogated, and ultimately put in prison for having a miscarriage. That’s right, conservatives have made a real effort to criminalize miscarriages over the years. And yet LifeNews has the gall to wonder why Zuckerberg doesn’t support their anti-woman agenda.