Wednesday, December 21, 2016

My Experience as the Campus Misogynist

By James Silberman

In mid-October, a member of my school’s Students for Life club discovered that Planned Parenthood was listed among the school’s “community partners.” Being that we attend a tiny, Christian school, this came as quite the surprise to the group. As a member of the student newspaper, I decided to investigate further.
Whitworth Students for Life (J. Silberman, right)

Community partners are those organizations which Whitworth professors decide to use as resources for student learning, volunteering, and internships. There were a 153 such organizations listed on the school’s website.

In addition, Whitworth:
  • Had tear-off cards on walls around campus referring pregnant women to Planned Parenthood (which have since been taken down).
  • Sponsored a community bioresearch event defending Planned Parenthood from wrongdoing and praising fetal tissue research.
  • Gave Planned Parenthood a booth at the school volunteer fair.
  • Uses multiple textbooks which either blatantly push abortion to students or slander pro-life individuals.

You can read the whole op-ed here for more information.     

I was, of course, expecting a response from both sides of the abortion debate, but I didn’t anticipate the magnitude. The story got picked up by LifeSiteNews, Life News, Live Action, Campus Reform, Washington Times and a number of others. I was receiving threats from hippies in California and praise from pastors in Kansas.

Locally, the story led to a club being formed to support abortion rights, although I do not know as of yet whether Whitworth will allow the club to charter. They showed up to our next Students for Life event and protested, forcefully at first, surrounding us and our display and not letting anyone near. They moved to the outside of the HUB once we alerted security that we had the space reserved.

The Administration Responds
On Dec. 2, Whitworth Students for Life met with two members of school administration to discuss the situation and suggest a few changes. Our message was threefold:

  1. As an institution of higher learning, we understand that it isn’t your role to take sides on political issues. Abortion, however, is not a political issue. It is an issue of immense human pain and suffering. For any institution, but especially a religiously-affiliated one, to give credence to the idea that dismembering a human being is morally acceptable is abhorrent. The school has a responsibility to stand up and be counted on this issue.
  2. Even if abortion weren’t so abhorrent, to affiliate with Planned Parenthood makes no business sense. For decades, Planned Parenthood has skirted around the law with ease due to their political connections. With Jeff Sessions and his 100% pro-life record as the soon-to-be U.S. Attorney General, Planned Parenthood is about to go down in flames. Whitworth needs to get off that ship soon lest they get pulled down with it.
  3. Whitworth should replace all links to Planned Parenthood with I-Choice, the local pregnancy resource center. Student interns, as well as pregnant women, are in much better hands there.

Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in Spokane
On the Planned Parenthood front, the school was unwilling to budge. The two administrators stated emphatically that they only hire professors whom they trust to teach students, and that they had no interest in telling professors what to include or not include in their classes. Planned Parenthood remains a “community partner” and the two administrators stated that Planned Parenthood would continue to be allowed to have booths on campus to recruit students if that is something professors wanted.

The administrators were, however, amicable to getting I-Choice more involved on campus. The volunteer center scheduled a meeting with them and I-Choice will be an option for service-learning moving forward.

It was frustrating, to say the least, to receive pushback from Christians on the idea that human dismemberment was objectively immoral. I do think, however, a few observations need to be made before coming to final judgement.

Bad, but not the Worst, Alas
Whitworth is far more conservative than the vast majority of their competitors in higher education. For instance, Pacific Lutheran University advocates “sex positivity” in some departments and administers Next Choice and Ella pills in their health center. Normally these pills are able to prevent conception from occurring. In the case that ovulation has already occurred, however, the pill eats away at the uterine lining which prevents the embryo from being able to implant itself. In such cases, these pills act as abortifacients. A Lutheran school is administering this on campus.

Around the same time the drama at Whitworth was unfolding, a Catholic university in Chicago had their medical students perform “mock abortions” on a papaya, with the seeds representing the child. The University of Chicago and the University of New Mexico have medical centers which perform second trimester abortions.

In my original article I wrote:
“The only mitigating factor of my distaste towards the actions of the school in regard to Planned Parenthood and abortion is the fact that I know this isn’t just a Whitworth problem.”
I should have clarified further. Relatively speaking, Whitworth is downright conservative, as hard as that may be to believe.
Student-made posters at Whitworth University,
a "conservative" Christian school

This is not a Whitworth problem, per se. It’s an education problem, higher education in particular. There aren’t textbooks which accurately relay information about abortion risks and fetal development and there aren’t many professors who care. They’re more than happy to take their talking points straight from NARAL and Planned Parenthood.

This doesn’t exonerate Whitworth, but it puts their actions in perspective.

Dilemma for Christian Parents
I received many emails from concerned parents of teens who said they will reconsider recommending Whitworth to their kids and their neighbors. I told these parents that no matter where they send their kids, unless it’s a straight-up Bible College, these ideas will be pushed on them, and that Whitworth actually has remained truer to its Christian roots than most “Christian” schools. There are still a number of active ministries on campus and, from what I hear, a great theology department.

Nevertheless, I would support plans to pressure the school to cut all ties with Planned Parenthood. If that were to happen, it would be unfortunate that an example would be being made of a relatively conservative school, but it is difficult for me to feel bad for a school that allows Planned Parenthood to recruit student on campus, allows their professors to tell students that Margaret Sanger was a hero, and gives them textbooks that depict pro-lifers as violent misogynists.

There needs to be wholesale change in the American education system. We’ve allowed the pro-abortion side to run campuses and curricula for far too long.

A Silent  and Scared  Majority
The biggest thing I learned through this ordeal has to do with the nature of the debate. In the weeks following the publishing of the story, I was surprised to discover that most people on campus actually agreed with me. This is surprising because few were willing to say that publicly, and the public stream of conscious rage displayed by dozens of abortion supporters creates the impression that they are the majority. This finding is consistent with recent data. According to a Students for Life survey, 53% of millennials oppose abortion in all or most cases and 17% oppose it in all cases.

The problem is that pro-life individuals are far more hesitant to speak up than their pro-abortion counterparts. Despite PP’s extreme views on abortion representing a tiny minority of Americans, their positions have been mainstreamed by the media and the education system. Anyone who speaks against these ideas is publicly ridiculed and even threatened. I merely got a few mild threats of physical violence, but a previous Whitworth Students for Life president received numerous death threats. This seems to be the preferred tactic of the Left.


If the pro-life movement is going to succeed, it’s members are going to have to be brave. You will be publicly dressed down. You will be called a bigot and a misogynist, even if you’re a woman. You will be out of place on a campus where pro-life ideas are pushed to the fringe. But once you get past that, you’ll realize there are a lot more people on your side than you thought and also that there’s nothing the Left can do to you that’s worse than knowing you could have done something and didn’t.

Thursday, June 30, 2016

"It is like mass abortion!!"

We are going to continue with our series highlighting reviews by past customers of abortion clinics in Washington State. The following is an anonymous review of Cedar River Clinics, in Tacoma.

A Google User
6 years agoI had an appointment for termination and was kinda shocked when I arrived at the clinic. It is located in one of the really not so nice areas of Tacoma and as I stepped inside it got even worse. I was given a bunch of paperwork and was told to plan up to 6h in the clinic. Well now I know why. They do not care about you as a person, your feelings and emotions. It is like mass abortion!! The place is pretty run down, growded with tons of people waiting for their appointments and I do not even want to go into details about the sort of people sitting next to you in the waiting room. One lady was sitting there, telling me she was a little out of it cause you are not allowed to use street drugs 24h before the procedure. I was absolutely disgusted and scared!!! I decided to leave and made an appointment with a different clinic!!
The review elicited a response from Beverly Whipple, the clinic owner, a year later. Ms. Whipple didn't deny the woman's experience and instead declared how proud she was to have customers like those filling the waiting room.

Readers will remember that we've previously written about Cedar River. They were being sued for medical malpractice.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Planned Parenthood Bellevue Slammed by Client for Horrible Treatment

The following is a review posted on Google Reviews by someone identifying themselves as "Yuna Kim". We are not able to provide independent corroboration at this time. This review was of Planned Parenthood in Bellevue, Washington.


Even though I fully support Planned Parenthood, some of these people have put me through a lot and made me feel reeeaaally really guilty for needing birth control. 

Im not sure if I spoke with someone from the Bellevue location or maybe someone from a help center of some sort, but I called yesterday morning to ask a couple questions. I gave the woman over the phone a very veeery bad, brief version of my situation which was; I missed my depo appointment at the beginning of the month and had unprotected sex at the end of the month. I wrongly assumed I didn't have to go through how this happened and justify my mistakes because I expected the staff at Planned Parenthood to be respectful and understanding. However the woman I spoke with got furious with me. She started yelling at some points, cutting me off while talking, asking condescending and rhetorical questions like "well what do you THINK is gonna happen!?". I was asking for clarifications on how my Depo shot works and she kept barking "I dont know WHERE you got this INFO but you are WRONG!" At the end of the conversation I was in tears and asked "what did you say your name was again?". She paused for a second and then hung up. If I went into details of how I got in this situation, I would have explained to her how it wasn't consentual and how the reason I never got my shot was because the clinic messed up my scheduling and was also rude about it. I didn't want to explain this. But if I did maybe she would've treated me like a human being. 

Planned Parenthood staff, if someone reads this, please contact me. I don't feel comfortable using your services right now. I need it, but I feel attacked for something that wasn't entirely in my control. And even if it was, there is no excuse to belittle your clients for using your services.

This was posted 2 months ago.