Planned Parenthood's Poor PR Strategy

Why are Planned Parenthood and the troops throwing such an enormous hissing fit over less than a $1 million dollars a year for an organization which rakes in $1 billion a year? That's less than 1/10 of 1% of Planned Parenthood's annual income and some pro-choice bloggers are acting like this is the end of the world.

I don't remember anywhere near this much wailing and gnashing of teeth over various state initiatives to defund Planned Parenthood which had much more money at stake. Planned Parenthood closed clinics in various states because it lost some of those funds. No clinic is going to close because of this. Yet this was the leading story at 11:00 p.m. last night for my local CBS affiliate despite Komen not providing any funds to Michigan Planned Parenthood affiliate in the last year.

Part of the strategy is obviously to raise money from the hardcore PP supporters. That's obvious. It's another fundraising appeal. They did the same thing when Indiana moved to defund them and PP acted like they needed donations to keep offices open. So they've had a short term increase in donations.

But the downside is that PP is again embroiling itself in controversy and alerting anyone who is listening that they are under a Congressional investigation. That's bad PR and flat-out stupid. Before this, only your dedicated prolifers knew and remembered Planned Parenthood was under Congressional investigation.

Also, why would any organization with a shred of common sense want to give money to Planned Parenthood in the future when they know that if they ever decide severe ties with them, PP will go nuts. Long term this is going to hurt Planned Parenthood's grant getting ability.

Their short term fundraising will never eclipse the future losses from acting this way towards an organization they used to have a friendly relationship with. If I was a Planned Parenthood board member I'd be looking to axe Ms. Richards and whoever came up with this "strategy."