Is there a better argument for Planned Parenthood and the full freedom of women to manage their own health than our over-crowded and dehumanizing prisons and, sader yet, their growing populations of children, many 14 and younger?

A growing majority of the prison population comes from the drug trade, easily a bigger threat to national progress and homeland security than domestic terrorists or the bulging prisons.   How long before our wanton appetites and addictions turn the lone superpower of the 20^th century into a paper tiger that no one fears economically or militarily?

Thinking Americans cannot allow the capital Ps on Planned Parenthood to further politicize and obscure the national security that its services derive.  It is the surest remedy to reckless procreation and abortions on demand.

However insufficient the research, evidence abounds on the connections between the fallout  of unwanted pregnancies and the prisons and the drug trade.  Pregnancies serve the public interest only when they are planned out by parents, coupled or single, who know they can feed, clothe, house and educate their offspring.  History makes it ever plainer that unintended pregnancies carried to term  produce too many unwanted, homeless and desperate children who turn criminal in reward for their missing families and society for their demoralizing misfortunes.

In growing numbers, as the prisons remind us, they are lured into the drug trade by easy money or addiction or both.   Huge profits have turned the trade into its own culture, with its own laws, in which the masters turn children into runners, shock troops and enforcers.   The few who survive by wits or luck become the new masters, who then lure more angry and rootless children into the trade.

Is this the history that Americans want to go on writing for the 21^st century?  Addictions make it tougher for us to excel not only as parents but also at jobs that will keep our workplaces, our workforce and our products and services competitive in the globalized economy. While Planned Parenthood can’t   halt the drug war, it well may work against it.  The sense of responsibility that leads adults to Planned Parenthood also arms them to fight other strains and temptations that weaken family life, including drug abuse.

Families that start with a plan, then work their plan, can come to an internal strength deeper than any church can provide, though the two often work in complement.   It’s a strength capable of shrinking the myriad of antisocial behavior that weakens families, destroys children, enables terrorists and thugs, enslaves women, cripples the law, and poisons politics.

Call it the planned parenthood born and spread by Planned Parenthood.  Civilization can ill afford to do without it.

The politicians who rail against Planned Parenthood and federal deficits in the same breath deserve to lose.  They are oblivious to the obvious connection.  If the voters are fooled by them, then  together they will reap over time more failed marriages, more lawless offspring, more prisons and more budget deficits.

– Frank Mensel, April 2012