The notion of a "Disney princess" is probably one that we all have a notion about, probably depending on your age. The older you are, the gentler your memory may be, so if you come out of the Snow White or Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella cartoon movie era, you have a very romantic notion of the princess being a fairy-tale young lady who gets her happy ending in the arms of a handsome prince.
The Disney princesses of that era were what we grew up on and, although their personalities may have varied a bit, there seemed a common cloth whence they were all cut. The more latter-day ones, whose songs are a bit edgier than "Some Day My Prince Will Come", are still princesses but with a bit more independence and an extra note or two to their personalities.
At least, I think that's the case. At 66, I don't much follow what the more recent Disney princesses are, or are like, so I can't really say what today's nine-year-old girl conjures up in her mind when she thinks "Disney princess." But I imagine we have a sense of what that means.
Apparently Planned Parenthood, those friends of the unborn everywhere under the guise of "reproductive health", have yet another idea. Earlier this week, one of their locations in Pennsylvania sent out an unprompted tweet that got a lot of people's attention. It read something like this:
"We need a Disney princess who has had an abortion.
We need a Disney princess who is pro-choice.
We need a Disney princess who is an undocumented immigrant.
We need a Disney princess who is actually [sic] a union worker.
We need a Disney princess who's trans."
We need all that, according to the experts in Planned Parenthood in Allentown, Pennsylvania, who do not appear to have written this tweet in response to anything specific, but felt the need to express all this philosophy on a hypothetically receptive world. So they did.
I thought it was kind of odd, myself, when I read it, but I looked deep into the imaginary eyes of its author and had a bunch of questions.
Who, I want to know first, is this "we" about whom they are presenting this, and who apparently need those things? What hole in the life of this "we" is best filled by seeing a Disney princess who made the (hopefully) agonizing choice to end the life of an unborn child? What hole in that life needs to be satisfied by seeing a cartoon princess who was originally a prince, or vice versa (I can't always be sure whether the left wants us to refer to the "before" or the "after" portrayed gender)?
So I don't know. I still cling to the reasonable notion that even nine-year-old girls growing up in the Facebook era still want to see princesses as we saw them when we were young, and the stories were simpler. So I'd like the Allentown office of Planned Parenthood to explain what they think a little girl is supposed to ask her parents about, when the topic of aborting an unborn life shows up on a cartoon.
Now, Planned Parenthood is an abortion practice, we all understand that; some non-trivial percentage of their revenue is dependent on it (not the mere 3% they claim, though not the 94% that others claim). So naturally it is in their financial interest to promote the notion to nine-year-old girls that if they get pregnant, la la la, just toddle off to Planned Parenthood and fork over a few hundred bucks, kill the unborn baby and life will be well. Makes perfect sense to me.
But I don't quite get their interest in the last three things, wanting an illegal-alien Disney princess, or one with gender dysphoria, or who -- not making this up -- is in a union (hence my "[sic]" note above after the word "actually"). OK, the first two are standard hard-left talking-point victim classes they want votes from, I get that. The nuance of immigration status, distinguishing legal immigration, going through the right steps as one would in all other countries, from just walking over the border -- that's lost on the left, so it would clearly be lost on a nine-year-old unless the facts are presented. I'd frankly like to see the story that Planned Parenthood has to create, to explain a transgendered princess.
But unions? Donald Trump carried 46% of the vote in union households in 2016; four percent more and it would have been dead even -- and while I was unable to find data easily distinguishing public-sector from trade union membership, I've no doubt that as for the trade unions, Trump actually won their members.
Unions have long been a dying, or at least moribund institution. Having served their usefulness decades since by getting a reasonable legal balance between employer and employee -- overdoing it, in some opinions -- members have asked themselves what purpose their dues are serving, and have left in droves. The laws, they feel, are already in place, and the agency services (negotiation) are not worth nearly what they're charged in dues -- and if the majority of trade-union members are Trump voters, seeing those dues going to the Clintons and other Democrats who want to put miners out of business does not fly.
But what do unions have to do with Planned Parenthood? Why would an abortion clinic organization they are, or even the "reproductive health" outfit they claim to be, care about a Disney princess being a member of a union? And unions for trades are not the same thing as government-employee unions, which ought to be banned but likely never will be. What has any of that got to do with Disney, or its princesses?
I don't know if Planned Parenthood, on the heels of keeping its taxpayer donations in the current budget deal, is just crowing a bit and think they can get away with it. But I'm here to tell you that I think they have stepped in it big time with this. Disney princesses are, after all, sacred.
And Congress may finally decide in the 2019 budget that enough is enough.
Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton
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