[talk.abortion] Survey regarding Planned Parenthood corporate support

mlawless@qa1.Wichita.NCR.COM (Mike Lawless) (05/18/90)

In article <1990May17.165749.6162@cs-col.Columbia.NCR.COM> vause@cs-col.Columb
>In article <535@secola.Columbia.NCR.COM> acress@secola.Columbia.NCR.COM (Andy
>>NCR Corp. has recently become a financial supporter of 
>>Planned Parenthood.  
>
>Can someone enlighten me as to what *policy* means here?  What are the
>positions that PP has?  

In a nutshell, Planned Parenthood is a militant supporter of the "right" of
a woman to abortion for any reason (or no reason) at any time from conception
to birth.  In many places, Planned Parenthood actually operates abortion
"clinics," and at its locations that don't actually perform abortions, they 
steer "clients" to the nearest abortuary.  They are also strongly opposed to
any effort to require parental consent or notification for minors seeking
abortions.  (Minors are required to have parental consent to have their ears
pierced, howver, or to be treated for possibly life threatening injuries or
illnesses).

Planned Parenthood is also at the forefront of the push to put "health" 
clinics in public schools, the primary purpose of which is to dispense
contraceptives to minors without parental knowledge or consent.  Their
message to the teenagers of America seems to be "We know you are going to
have sex, so just be careful so you don't catch anything like AIDS or a baby."
I won't discuss at length the folly of this practice here; most people
wouldn't read a posting that long anyway.  I will simply point out that there
are a lot of people who find Planned Parenthood and all that they stand for
morally repugnant and strongly object to their tax dollars being used to
support such an organization; they also object to companies in which they own
stock supporting such an organization.

However, I think it would be premature for anyone to sell their NCR stock
over this issue.  I would first allow the board (or whoever is responsible
for this decision) to consider the inevitable outcry against this decision,
and see whether they respond by reversing it.  If not, we have one other
course of action open to us; stockholder can propose ballot questions for the
annual stockholders meeting of the corporation.  Does anyone know how to do
this?  Of course, we would have to wait until April of next year for this
course of action to bear fruit.  Let's hope it doesn't take until then for
this disgusting action to be reversed.  For that to happen, however, the
people responsible for it, or their superiors, have to be made aware of the
fact that they have deeply offended a lot of stockholders (which includes
most employees, due to the PAYSOP plan of a few years ago).

Finally, credibility demands that any such protest be based on accurate
information.  All of the above is based on the assumption that the original
statement is in fact true.  If it is not, I apologize for the above tirade.
We need to have all of the facts; if anyone knows more details about this,
including who made the decision, when it was made, the amounts of the grant,
whether any money has actually gone to PP yet, etc., please enlighten the
rest of us as soon as possible.

Obviously, nobody expects the resolution of this issue one way or another to
have much real effect on the abortion rate; regrettably, abortion will likely
continue unabated one way or the other.  All we are asking is that NCR not
give aid and comfort to the abortionists, since that is in effect endorsing
what they are doing, which a large percentage of people consider to be nothing
less than the wanton slaughter of millions of innocents each year.

If NCR is looking for a way to REALLY help with the problem of teenage
pregnancy and family planning, they might look for more appropriate orgaini-
zations to support, such as Birthright (which provides medical and other
assistance to women with problem pregnancies, and helps to arrange for
adoptions); the Couple to Couple league (which teaches Natural Family Planning
and abstinence for unmarried teens); or any of the small, local organizations
which provide similar services.  Face it, how can PP expect teenagers to
use contraceptives properly when adults can't even seem to get the hang of it?
Is it any wonder that the teen pregnancy rate has skyrocketed since they
started encouraging the use of contraceptives among teenagers?  For teenagers,
responsible sex means total abstinence, not sex that doesn't result in a
baby or a loathsome disease.  That is what we need to be teaching our kids,
but that is NOT what PP is teaching them.  We need to be supporting organiza-
tions that will take a similarly responsible approach, not self-serving
outfits like Planned Parenthood, whose main motivation seems to be selling
products like contraceptives and "abortion services," with the government
and corporate foundations picking up most of the tab.

news1@texbell.swbt.com (Greg Hackney) (06/03/90)

Please take the time to exclude "comp.sys.ncr" from this discussion thread.

This newsgroup was chartered for technical discussions on NCR computer systems,
not human rights and NCR's policies on them.

Thanks.
--
Greg Hackney
NCR Tower Mailing List Maintainer

art@pegasus.com (Art Neilson) (06/04/90)

In article <377@qa1.Wichita.NCR.COM> mlawless@qa1.UUCP (Mike Lawless) writes:
[ lotsa crap regarding abortion deleted ]


*PLEASE* *PLEASE* *PLEASE* take this thread OUT of here !!! This group is
comp.sys.ncr, we discuss NCR systems here, NOT the pros and cons of abortions.
This is taking up net bandwidth, please keep this discussion contained in
the forum created for it, talk.abortion sounds appropriate.
-- 
Arthur W. Neilson III		| ARPA: art@pegasus.com
Bank of Hawaii Tech Support	| UUCP: uunet!ucsd!nosc!pegasus!art