There has been much commentary on the left about the right’s apoplexy over Planned Parenthood’s contribution to disaster relief: providing free or subsidized services to survivors, and shipping contraceptives into the disaster zone for those who lost theirs. I have little to add to the basic point: right-wing dumbasses simply can’t understand (a) why access to contraception and reproductive healthcare matters, and (b) why Planned Parenthood is supplying its resources and expertise to the relief effort, as opposed to, say, resources and expertise it doesn’t actually have. (Dawn Eden: “Is Planned Parenthood offering evacuees food? No! Water? No! Shelter? No! First aid? No!”) The stupidity, and the insensitive hostility to sex-related needs, speak for themselves.

But I notice another trend piggy-backing on these outbursts: not only are the wingers incensed that some disaster victims will retain control over their reproductive health in these desperate times, through the efforts of pro-freedom health organizations, but they’re delighted that other organizations are working equally hard to distort or close down reproductive health options under exactly the same circumstances. Specifically, a number of (almost always religiously-motivated) “crisis pregnancy centers” - which offer “support” to women in problem pregnancies but in fact pressure them to make only the choices the center approves, and often advertise themselves fraudulently as pro-choice - are scrambling for support to restart operations in the disaster zone.

Dawn Eden seems oblivious to her own double standard:

Planned Parenthood . . . is shamelessly milking Americans’ compassion for Katrina victims . . .

If those refugees have nowhere else to turn but Planned Parenthood, they’re really in trouble.

Please, pray for the victims, and donate to organizations that are providing them with real relief—including crisis-pregnancy centers.

Your values regarding your reproductive health are not OK. Dawn Eden’s values regarding your reproductive health are OK.

Jill Stanek has a similar set of priorities:

Louisiana and Mississippi pregnancy resource centers are in desperate need of our help. . . .

The good news is that five of eight Louisiana abortion clinics were also destroyed. . . .

Dorothy Wallis, director of Caring to Love Ministries in Baton Rouge, told me that Planned Parenthood was on the ground within 72 hours, handing out morning-after-pills at the shelters.

The only things standing in the way of spreading God’s truth and love to these abortion-vulnerable familes are money and hands. Please help.

This is quite odd. Apparently some of these centers are handing out baby formula and other child-care resources - which is an excellent thing, but one that can easily be handled by any relief agency or aid station. What “pregnancy resource centers” actually do is simply try to pressure people not to have abortions. Since it is always available not to have an abortion simply by . . . not having an abortion . . . it’s not clear what they think they’re doing down there. They’re not providing a unique service; their entire stock in trade is to not provide certain services.

What they are trying to do, of course, is establish a kind of alternative aid pipeline that will be sure to carefully exclude certain options - including emergency contraception and abortion, and in most cases regular contraception - that might otherwise be available at non-judgmental service providers. In other words, they’re trying to entice some victims into aid locations where they will not be allowed to have, and certainly not informed about, some of their options, and thereby block those options for that group of people, while simulataneously “spreading God’s truth and love” - i.e., engaging in religious proselytizing to disaster victims who come to them in need. They are setting themselves up as part of the disaster relief effort, hoping to capture some part of the flow of victims through aid agencies, for the specific purpose of blocking those victims’ access to information and services these centers disapprove of for religious reasons, and then religiously proselytizing the victims as part of their manipulative services.

This by itself is disgusting, but the casual hypocrisy of their winger supporters is startling as well. The same people who accuse Planned Parenthood of “shamelessly” providing a full range of reproductive health services, and of requesting donations to support their doing so, are, on the same page, openly shilling for “crisis pregnancy centers” for the purpose of deliberately blocking patients’ health options and imposing religious beliefs and proselytizing on them, while soliciting donations to support their doing so. How is providing more services and more options taking advantage of “vulnerable” patients (vulnerable, that is, to making a choice Jill Stanek doesn’t like), while deliberately blocking access to services is “real relief” (or as much of it as Dawn Eden thinks you need)? No explanation necessary: in the winger world, dictating to other people what their values and priorities should be is a self-justifying act.