{"id":243489,"date":"2021-04-17T13:34:59","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T18:34:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=243489"},"modified":"2021-04-16T22:33:30","modified_gmt":"2021-04-17T03:33:30","slug":"planned-parenthood-new-clergy-advocacy-board-members","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/planned-parenthood-new-clergy-advocacy-board-members\/","title":{"rendered":"Planned Parenthood announces new clergy advocacy board members"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) has\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0new faith leaders for its clergy advocacy board, including the president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.<\/p>\n

“Access to comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care \u2014 including abortion \u2014 is supported by people of all faiths,” said PPFA president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson. “The Clergy Advocacy Board is a crucial part of our mission at Planned Parenthood to promote, protect and expand access to health care for all … Planned Parenthood is proud to have religious leaders of all faiths standing with us in this fight.”<\/p>\n

When Planned Parenthood’s eugenicist founder Margaret Sanger instituted her infamous “Negro Project,” she insisted that Black ministers and doctors must be recruited to convince people from the Black community to buy into the “family planning” cause. As Live Action News previously noted<\/a>, “In 1939, Sanger\u00a0penned a letter<\/a>\u00a0to Clarence Gamble regarding her desire to use Black ministers in furthering her organization\u2019s agenda, because, she said, ‘We do not want\u00a0word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population,’ and if it did, these ministers could ‘straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of\u00a0their more rebellious members.’ So the idea of using religious leaders in an effort to prop up Planned Parenthood’s population control ideals has been in existence practically since its founding.<\/p>\n

READ:\u00a0Clergy to \u2018ask for God\u2019s blessing\u2019 on Planned Parenthood abortion facility<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The clergy board at PPFA has existed for decades, according to Religion News Service<\/a>. However, PPFA is celebrating new additions to the board who are from states that lean pro-life. The list includes the Rev. Emily Harden of West Virginia, Rabbi Sarah Smiley of Kansas, the Rev. Katey Zeh of North Carolina, the Rev. Rebecca Todd Peters of North Carolina, the Rev. Elise Saulsberry of Tennessee, the Rev. Latishia James-Portis of Georgia, the Rev. Stephen Griffith of Nebraska, the Rev. Elle Dowd of Illinois,\u00a0 and the Rev. Tim Kutzmark of California.<\/p>\n

“As a clergyperson who discovered my call to ministry within a Planned Parenthood, it was a no-brainer,” Zeh told Religion News Service. She said she felt moved to pro-abortion work while volunteering as an abortion doula at a Planned Parenthood while in seminary. “There are so few of us who are people of faith who are willing to be bold and audacious about supporting reproductive freedom because of our faith.”<\/p>\n

Saulsberry, who runs the pro-abortion SisterReach, said you “can’t put a price” on the role of faith-based pro-abortion groups. “As leaders of faith and as clergy, we are to stand and speak out loud \u2014 as loud as other clergy \u2014 in support of reproductive health, rights, and justice.”<\/p>\n

Pro-abortion pastors face push-back. When self-proclaimed “pro-choice pastor”\u00a0Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock was campaigning, then-U.S. Rep. Doug Collins said there is “no such thing as a pro-choice pastor” and that to say so is “a lie from the bed of hell.”<\/p>\n

According to the very first verse of the first book of the Old Testament in the Bible, God is the Creator of all things – including all life (Genesis 1:1). And, according to Scripture, God hates<\/a> the shedding of innocent blood. Every human being He has ever created was made in His image. And therefore, it is not logical to think that He would support the idea of abortion, which destroys the lives of human beings made in His image. The fact that killing a child in abortion is legal<\/em> does not automatically make it a moral<\/em> choice \u2014 indeed, abortion has long been considered by the Church to be an intrinsically evil act that no circumstance can justify<\/a>.<\/p>\n