Republican Women Donors Support New Planned Parenthood Merger in Texas | Evangelicals on Abstinence

Liquid-Plumr added a bit of handsome beefcake and housewifery imagination to this spring’s ad campaign, produced DDB, San Francisco and directed by Biscuit Filmworks’ Clay Weiner.

Bringing a big smile to the face of many viewers, One Million Moms — who protested JC Penney’s hiring of Ellen Degeneres at their spokesperson— swung into action, driving lots of visibility for the campaign and over one million video views in a week.

One Million Moms wrote:

Liquid-Plumr presents two sexy plumbers in their new commercial. The Clorox Company introduces the Liquid-Plumr Double Impact Snake and Gel System in this ad which is full of sexual innuendos as well. They are attempting to use sex to sell a product to unclog drains.

The commercial starts off with a woman in a supermarket daydreaming about what this new Liquid-Plumr product has to offer. She says, “Double impact,” twice as she reads the bottle. In her dream she is at home and answers the door to find a sexy plumber. The plumber is nice looking with huge biceps and a tight shirt. He says, “I’m here to snake your drain.” She says come on in and he walks upstairs. The doorbell rings again and it is a second sexy plumber. He says, “I’m here to flush your pipe.” She answers with an okay and while he walks on upstairs she lets out a squeal and moan while letting down her hair. Then she wakes up to reality to find the two men in the supermarket. She flirts by giving sexy eyes to the one man in the deli slicing meat and the other in produce holding two melons. These two men are the same as in her dream. It may be coincidence, but the man in produce is standing beside cucumbers with a price sign behind him reading 69 cents.

The new Liquid-Plumr ad is offensive and completely inappropriate for television.

We side with Libby Copeland, writing Bring On the Sexy Plumbers for Slate, who argues that this ad isn’t at all your typical stereotypical commercial because we have a nerdy female protagonist with a very playful delivery.

One again, the social conservatives doth scream too loudly. Smart people like AOC readers know that 1) social conservatives buy more pornography than any other group — and Sunday is the biggest day of the week for sales; 2) the classic good girl, stay-at-home mom is the most likely subscriber to Ashley Madison’s marital affair website and 3) what women say and what we do aren’t frequently not in alignment. A 2005 Internet search survey of 75 million users put to rest the truth of women’s online behavior, almost reinforcing point 2 made by Ashley Madison. Read on: Sexy Doublespeak | American Women & Sexual Honesty.

Daily French Roast

Anne is reading …

Mary Green, Peg Armstrong and Jan Perrault hold up signs during Women’s Health Express, a bus event held in San Antonio to protest the attempt to cut Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid Women’s Health Program. A federal judge in Austin issued an injunction Monday that stopped the state from banning the organization from receiving state funds, but that injunction was stayed by a federal appeals judge Tuesday. (Helen L. Montoya/San Antonio Express-News / May 1, 2012) Planned Parenthood of Texas won a brief victory yesterday when a federal judge in Austin issued an injunction that prevented the state of Texas from withdrawing all Medicare funding from 49 clinics serviced by the organization.

Today, Judge Jerry Smit of the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans stayed the injunction, giving Planned Parenthood until 5pm today to file an opposition brief pending the appeal filed by the state of Texas yesterday.

In a new development, Planned Parenthoods in Texas quietly completed a merger of three regional branches (North Texas, Austin and Waco) into one $29 million-per-year, 26-clinic mega-organization. This is not the first Planned Parenthood merger in Texas. “In 2006, Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas teamed with Planned Parenthood Louisiana to form Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, which operates 13 health centers across two states,” writes the NY Times.

Tactically, the merger makes the new Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas monolithic in both geography and scope. In 2012 the group will have 26 clinics, with four providing abortions and an expected 180,000 annal patient visits. 

Perhaps most important, Planned Parenthood will directly connect wealthy donors in Dallas to poor women at the other end of the state. Key to the Texas plan to save Planned Parenthood are wealthy Republican women, the original sponsors and funders of the organization.

The merged organization has budgeted roughly $24.5 million in private donations, fund-raising events and client fees in 2013, is already rolling out the latest in electronic health records technology. “And it absorbs the fruits of the North Texas branch’s recent five-year capital campaign, including an Addison health center that tripled in size with a recent relocation and a new $6.5 million health care clinic, administrative facility and abortion clinic under construction in Fort Worth” writes the NYT.

DFR Women & Religion

New Admissions on Abstinence Education

On rare occasions a truly honest article about sex and abstinence hits the digital airwaves. When the National Association of Evangelicals admits in a video that eighty percent of young evangelicals have engaged in premarital sex and almost one-third of evangelicals’ unplanned pregnancies end in abortion, such an article as Huff Po’s With High Premarital Sex And Abortion Rates, Evangelicals Say It’s Time to Talk About Sex gets our attention.

At this month’s Q conference in Washington, as part of a session on ‘reducing abortion’, respondents were asked if churches should support the use of contraception among unmarried singles. 64 percent said ‘yes’.

At an April 2012 ‘Sexuality and Covenant’ conference, co-sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the agenda contained the statement that ‘marital sexual relationships’ are not available for many Christians.

If evangelicals are finally recognizing that comprehensive sex education and access to contraception has the most positive effect on reducing America’s abortion rate, there exists an opportunity for dialogue between currently opposed forces. There is absolutely no evidence that abstinence-only education works and it seems that the National Association of Evangelicals finally agrees.

Trendline

The XX Factorreports that a survey of 3,000 Gen Xers finds that men are making two-thirds of the meals that married women do, and 80% the meals of single women.

Pew Research shares a new survey that Supreme Court favorability ratings have reached a new low. Only 52% have a favorable opinion of the Supreme Court, down from 58% in 2010 and the previous low of 57% in 2005 and 2007.

Also from Pew Research, young women now surpass young men on the importance of career in their lives. Two-thirds (66%) of young women ages 18 to 34 rate career high on their list of life priorities, against 59% of young men. In 1997, 56% of young women and 58% of rated career as a top priority.