Planned Parenthood’s new president Leana Wen is in over her head. This morning, she’s upset about media coverage that takes her at her word.
Some context. Wen is a Baltimore-area doctor who took the reins at Planned Parenthood late last year after the resignation of Cecile Richards, who led the group for twelve years. Since taking over, Wen has orchestrated an intensified PR push to portray the abortion provider as a health-care organization.
...Yesterday, Buzzfeed published a lengthy look at Wen’s strategy for Planned Parenthood, reporting on her cross-country tour searching for ways to provide more routine health-care services to women. The profile also noted her effort to refocus the group away from politics: “People aren’t coming to Planned Parenthood to make a political statement,” Wen told Buzzfeed.
But Wen is displeased with the news outlet’s final product. “I am always happy to do interviews, but these headlines completely misconstrue my vision for Planned Parenthood,” she tweeted this morning.
“Our core mission is providing, protecting and expanding access to abortion and reproductive health care,” Wen added.
This is an interesting admission from a group that ritually insists abortion is a mere 3 percent of the services it provides — a statistic that has been debunked by sources such as the Washington Post and Slate. Is abortion the group’s core mission, or are we meant to believe that upwards of 321,000 abortions per year amount to a rounding error?
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