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.
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!artmlawless@qa1.Wichita.NCR.COM (Mike Lawless) (06/06/90)
I have received, via both news and email, a considerable amount of criticism for having included the newsgroup "comp.sys.ncr" in my recent followup posting on Planned Parenthood. This is a valid criticism, as this newsgroup is reserved for technical discussions on NCR systems, as was pointed out to me by the Corporate WIN administrator by private email. As I explained to him in my reply, this was NOT intentional, but was a result of the fact that the original posting which started this thread included that newsgroup, and I did not notice the crossposting until it was too late. I certainly did not intend for that posting to have anything but internal NCR distribution. Mea maxima culpa. It won't happen again. I disagree, however, with those who suggest that it was inappropriate to post this to "ncr.misc" since it was basically about an issue of interest primarily to NCR employees. In fact, I didn't really intend for it to go to "talk.abortion" either; I don't follow that group, and I don't see any purpose that would be served by its appearing there (I doubt that I would change the minds of any of the readers of that group). However, to those who suggest that I should have kept my opinions to myself entirely, I respond that you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm also entitled to mine. Flames based on the content of my posting will be ignored; you might as well conserve the bandwidth. Basically, the original poster raised the issue, someone else asked about why some people find financial support for Planned Parenthood objectionable, and I answered the question. While I sincerely apologize for the unintended inapproprate distribution, I stand by my opinion as stated. I am apologizing for a netiquette violation, not for having stated my opposition to PP. I have included "comp.sys.ncr" in the distribution on this posting only because it was the inclusion of that group in the previous posting that caused the uproar. Since it appeared there, my public apology should appear there also. By the way, if this seems tardy, it is only because I did not start receiving the flames until over two weeks after I sent out the previous posting. You may therefore be seeing this as much as a month later. Finally, to anyone still inclined to tell me to shut up, don't bother; I don't plan to post anything further on this subject anyway.