The media continues to glorify the employment of Planned Parenthood employees and further the idea that one can be a Christian and work for the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosely, the Chief Medical Officer for Planned Parenthood, recently spoke with Self about the upbringing from her “devout Christian parents.” The sex education her parents provided was full of graphic details about “sexual pleasure,” which led McDonald-Mosley to share this information, including through drawings, with others.
The interview notes early on that McDonald-Mosley “was set early on her path to become a leader at Planned Parenthood. Not in rebellion against her upbringing, but inspired by it.” Little else is said to justify McDonald-Mosley’s role for the abortion provider, having been raised by her religious parents.
While the article focuses on the sexual lessons McDonald-Mosley’s imparted on her, which she describes as having been “devastated in the moment,” but “very grateful that we had such a meaningful conversation.” The article is also replete with advocating for sex education models, which Planned Parenthood does, in contrast to abstinence education. Nowhere is it mentioned by McDonald-Mosely or by Self that Planned Parenthood’s sex education models were shown to be a failure in a federal study.
Live Action has documented Planned Parenthood providing explicit sexual advice to minors, which includes activities minors are not legally allowed to engage in, such as watching pornography and going to sex shops. The abortion provider has also come under fire for promoting transgenderism and telling parents how to determine if their pre-school age children are transgender.
There’s also the discussion of “the formative power of a big bowl of condoms,” with McDonald-Mosley mentioning a Paris studio apartment where her host parents had such a bowl while studying abroad. She referenced such an experience in response to being asked about “any other experiences you had that shaped your ideas about sex.”
Research has shown, however, that handing free condoms to teens has actually increased the rate of unintended pregnancies.
One of the few other instances in which religion is further discussed is in a brief statement from McDonald-Mosley. “We chatted about the importance of getting sex education both at home and in school, why being religious doesn’t have to mean being sex negative…” she said about her parents.
Indeed, Christianity does not teach “being sex negative,” but rather that sex is a beautiful thing created by God, in the right context. Rather than take this approach, McDonald-Mosley’s parents seem to have gone the route of speaking in “embarrassingly graphic detail about the ways that I could explore sexual pleasure with myself or with a partner without having vaginal intercourse…”
McDonald’s Mosley interview was released in relevant timing to a Washington Post op-ed from researcher Mark Regenerus on Christians and premarital sex. Chelsen Vicari, of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, provides a thoughtful analysis here.