Planned Parenthood had managed to get their sex manual into most schools in Nova Scotia but, thanks to the Strait School Board (part of Cape Breton and Nova Scotia), we stood alone in ensuring our children would be free of the manual's graphic depictions of sex, misleading information, exaggerated claims about "safe" sex, pornography, and a lot of other unmentionables. That, however, was one whole year ago.

          Recently, in a sneaky move that carefully avoided any input from parents, the school board did an aboutface and passed a motion to promote "health clinics" in every school. The health clinics, of course, will be staffed by doctors and nurses who will promote-what else?  Sex manuals.

          To be fair, the Strait School Board would not be the first organization to be outfoxed by Planned Parenthood. PP is a highly profitable organization that makes millions of dollars selling pharmaceuticals, abortifacients, sex gadgets, and abortions. Last year they made more than $800 million in the U.S. alone. Cash-strapped governments that have no money for hospital beds or nursing homes fall over themselves to fund PP projects. In 2003 the Nova Scotia departments of health and health promotion gave PP more than $300,000.

          PP has used this money well. In the words of one school board insider, "They are relentless." They don't give up. They don't care what it takes. They never take "no" for an answer. They will do anything to make sure that children have access to PP manuals. Why? Because it is an essential aspect of their profit structure. Changing human behaviour into accepting deviant sexual practices always leads to higher demand for the abortions and pharmaceutical products that PP markets. 

          Certainly, there are agents within PP who have the best of intentions, who think they are saving the world from unborn children who they fear will become future serial killers. But what is at the heart of PP? Where has it come from and how has it accomplished such a complete coup d'etat?

Origins
          Margaret Sanger opened the first contraception clinic in New York in 1916 and by 1942 had merged several organizations into what we know today as Planned Parenthood. Sanger worked as a brilliant marketer to bring contraception, abortion, and unlimited sexual licence from back-alley brothels to mainstream society.

          And she was an enthusiastic proponent of eugenics, the practice of eliminating "undesirable" classes of people so as to "purify" America. Eugenics was a popular philosophy among academics and scientists of the time and did not fall entirely out of vogue until it became associated with Nazis. Among the "undesirable" classes targeted by Sanger: people of African, Jewish, or Latin ancestry, the "feebleminded," the poor-and Catholics. Yes, Catholics.

          In Birth Control Review, which Sanger founded, controlled and edited, she provided a launching point for promoting eugenics.  In the April 1933 issue, one of her selected authors stated: "Slavs, Latin, and Hebrew immigrants are human weeds. a deadweight of human waste.. Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a menace to the race.. We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock."

          Sanger's own words could be breathtakingly abrupt. "We don't want the word to go out," she said in a private letter, "that we want to exterminate the Negro population." The statement came in the context of how Sanger and Dr. C. Gamble (of the Proctor & Gamble empire) could most effectively market sterilization and contraception to African Americans.

          Catholics were "undesirable" because they were mostly poor Irish and Latin immigrants and Sanger associated poverty with undesirability. She promoted the ancient prejudice that Catholics were conspiring against America, by suggesting that Catholics, in their unity with Rome, were a danger to the state.

          She used her journal to highlight anti-Catholic authors.  With her approval, Norman Himes wrote: "Are Catholic stocks genetically inferior to such non-Catholic libertarian stocks as Unitarians and. Freethinkers? Inferior to non-Catholics in general? My guess is that the answer will someday be made in the affirmative."

What is happening today?
          Which brings me back to the present. When the Strait School Board refused to allow Planned Parenthood's sex manual to be dispersed in our schools, the strategists at PP went on the attack. Suddenly, pharmacies and doctors' offices across the region were distributing the sex manual by the box load. Even grocery stores (Sobeys) were co-opted to spread the good news of sexual liberation. Almost hourly, advertisements began on the main radio station for the region promoting "sexuality and you," a website of PP information and links to more than nine PP clinics. Instead of working to help abused women, Women's Resource Centres were pushing to open contraception clinics in schools. This mostly Catholic region containing the highest density of Catholics in Nova Scotia was suddenly blasted with PP literature attempting to convince Catholics to enroll themselves in PP's voluntary eugenics program, anchored in contraception and abortion. Given Sanger's hatred of Catholics, is it a coincidence that this region would be targeted?

          Nonetheless, PP's philosophy did not catch on. What is the point of making these sex manuals available to children who may or may not read them? What if the children have not seen them at Sobeys or heard the radio advertisements? PP must get the information into children's hands directly. They must find a place where children gather and comprise a captive audience, where children can be forced to read the manuals-the school system.

          And so an innocuous group of students were organized to make a presentation to the Strait School Board to encourage "health clinics." The stated rationale for the clinics had absolutely nothing to do with PP or its philosophy. PP needed to be careful that its fingerprints would not be found. Presenters were only concerned with anorexia, depression, and other legitimate health issues. Not a word about PP. Not a word about sex manuals or abortions.

          Meanwhile agents of Planned Parenthood had their pamphlets packed and ready. When the school board gave the okay for the "health" clinics, PP moved into action. I was informed by a teacher at one school that, even though the school board decision was made only on the evening of February 1, by February 8 a clinic was being set up at her school-four business days later. With school board members apparently oblivious.

          PP is a master chess player. They have their pawns placed high in the government departments that really count:  health, and health promotion. Angus MacIsaac and Rodney MacDonald, two Catholic MLAs from the region, run the departments. They give PP the money. Their bureaucrats apply the pressure. We pay the price.

          But the more important factor in PP's success is the impressive marketing of Sanger's beguiling slogans. The minds of most doctors, educators, academics, and politicians have been well programmed with Sanger's rights-based language. The pro-choice slogan is their all-purpose mantra. They refuse to scratch the surface of their slogan to examine the ethics of abortion, sterilization, voluntary eugenics, or even pushing graphic pornography on twelve-year-old girls. Not only that, but those who disagree are quickly categorized as part of the "undesirable" class otherwise known as the "intolerant."

          And, it appears, there is no teaching authority to set them straight. I recently spoke to a Nova Scotia woman who works with Catholic high-school students. She mentioned the word chastity to her class and asked if any of the thirty students could define the word. Not one even recognized it. Chastity? What's chastity?

          Sandy MacDonald is a lawyer and President of CCRL, Antigonish Chapter in Nova Scotia.

          Feel free to pass this article on. The truth will free our youth.

          This article is reprinted with the permission of the Atlantic Catholic.