Planned Parenthood Believes in Abstinence! Seriously.

planned-parenthood.jpg

Planned Parenthood Ohio is using a stodgy, responsible-looking older woman to rationalize its newest campaign, “The A-Word,” which from what I can tell is made up of one video and an “Abstinence” graphic in smudgy Courier. Two of the tabs, “Affordability” and “Advocacy,” are still “Coming Soon…”

The site was put together by Eisen Management Group, who argues “Planned Parenthood has been characterized in a largely false and negative light for far too long” — that is, as champions for sex, however safe, but not abstinence.

PP, I get that you’re trying to appeal to the redder half of Ohio, but couldn’t you have reached a little further? Show us some ragged cheerleaders, or the timid gangster waiting for his STD results. (The best part is, I’m actually drawing these examples from what I’ve seen in the waiting room.) Sex is fun, but worry isn’t, and abstinence’s best selling-point is peace of mind.

Your A-Word microsite’s half-baked, and I don’t like that woman; she’s too much like the Responsible Clinicians whose drymouth talk we have to endure before you give us our birth control shot already. Point of fact: those lectures aren’t effective, and neither is she.

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Steve Hall

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