What about planned parenthood?

     I recently had a lively facebook debate about the necessity of organizations such as planned parenthood.  It started out as a post stating that many people only associate planned parenthood with abortions.  It said that they provide so many other services that many poor people could not afford, such as annual check ups that the facebook poster had personally benefited from.
     Everyone on the facebook thread seemed to be agreeing with the post so I decided to dive in and stir things up with a dissenting viewpoint.  Boy that sure made things fun!  I appreciated the dialog.  It confronted my own stereotypes.
     I must admit when I think of planned parenthood, I imagine images of nefarious doctors walking around in blood covered lab coats with evil laughs rejoicing about all the babies they had killed that day.  I was confronted in this conversation with statements such as "Our local planned parenthood doesn't even perform abortions," and "Abortions are only 3% of what planned parenthood does."  I cannot verify the veracity of such claims but chose to hear things from a differing viewpoint.  Doing so helped me to realize that maybe my stereotypical misunderstandings had to be addressed.
     I want to be crystal clear about what I believe that the Bible teaches about this issue.  Life begins at conception!  Abortion is killing a human being created in the image of God and deeply loved by him!  With that said, this issue is so much more complicated than I would like to admit, and my facebook conversation helped me see just that.
     The bottom line is that people need help and the help they need will not be achieved by sign waving activists telling pregnant teenage girls that they are going to hell.  I firmly believe that government is not the answer.  The church filled with followers of Jesus Christ passionate about helping the poor and fighting injustice is the answer.
     Will I vote for Godly leaders who I hope will fight to end abortion?  Absolutely!  Will that solve all of our problems?  Absolutely not!
     What I will fight against is the assumptions our world seems to be based upon such as:  "Teenagers are going to have sex anyway."  "We need to stop unwanted pregnancies."
     "Teenagers are going to have sex anyway, so lets teach them safe sex," seems like such an insane line of reasoning.  Our current approach to drug prevention is simple "Say No to drugs."  How insane would it be to change to the following policy in educating elementary students: "Students are going to use drugs eventually so lets teach them how to use them safely!"  Has the abstinence from drugs message solved all our problems? No! But what would our country look like if we used the "Safe drug use" approach?
     Is abstaining from sex until marriage easy? No way!  Is it a lofty goal?  Absolutely!  It is something that my wife and I committed to prior to marriage and it was the best decision we ever made.  We made the decision, because we had adults in our lives who believed in us and taught us the value of following God's design for sex.
     So I had several take aways from my facebook conversation:  1.  Maybe I have some stereotypes that need to be addressed.  2. It is refreshing to have a healthy dialogue with someone of an opposing viewpoint.  3.  Lets not argue about surface issues but lets get down to the underlying assumptions.