Planned Parenthood 'Man up Monday' campaign has nothing to do with manning up

Judie Brown
By Rita Diller
April 26, 2012
Reproduced with Permission

A pair of boxer shorts with a very large fish hook protruding from the fly area draws young people's attention to the ad on the website of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Virginia. It sports the caption: Hook up this weekend? Make sure you didn't catch anything. MAN UP MONDAY!

So Planned Parenthood's war on women continues. To the nation's largest abortion chain, "manning up" does not mean taking responsibility for what you have done, or taking care of the women you injured and the children you may have had a hand in creating. It means making sure the man has not "caught" anything from his hookup. And he gets half-price testing as part of the bargain. No mention is made of the women who have been used and dumped, and no offer is made for half-price testing for them.

"We're thrilled to have the opportunity to provide even less expensive testing to local men," said CEO Pat Hurd in her media release. "Hampton Roads has some of the highest STI rates in the whole country, and we're hoping this incentive will be an important step in turning that dangerous statistic around."

Other "prevention oriented" ads and billboards on the Man up Monday website feature flaming underwear with a message that asks, "Hot weekend? MAN UP MONDAY. Get checked for HIV and STDs at a clinic near you." Another ad features a messy bed and is captioned, "If you hit it this weekend, hit the clinic Monday. MAN UP MONDAY."

Sorry to tell you this, Pat, but encouraging young men to hook up and then get tested on Monday doesn't sound like a preventive measure. It sounds like a way for you to make even more money after the fact by selling them treatment for the diseases contracted over the weekend, and letting them know you are there to quickly kill any babies who may have incidentally resulted from the hookup. By the way, will an STI contracted on Sunday show up on tests on Monday? Here is the answer from the Safelab Centre.

The amount of time before an STD will show up in a test after exposure is called the window period. For bacterial STDs like chlamydia and gonorrhea the window period is approximately three days from exposure minimum. For type specific STDs like HIV 1/2, Herpes 1/2, Hepatitis B/C and Syphilis the window period is approximately two weeks from exposure minimum.

But that's a small technicality. And never fear, Planned Parenthood has thought this one out and offers a solution to that next-day-testing-is-not-prevention oversight, should anyone notice. The campaign also has ads that promote stocking up on condoms on Monday in preparation for next weekend's hookup. Manning up, indeed.

A Planned Parenthood media release directs people to "The Monday Campaigns" website which says: "The Monday Campaigns is a non-profit public health initiative in association with Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Maxwell School at Syracuse. [Their] goal is to help end chronic preventable disease by offering a weekly prompt that can support people in starting and sustaining healthy behaviors." For more information, visit www.Mondaycampaigns.org.

Listed on that website with Man up Monday are other initiatives like Meatless Monday, Healthy Monday, Kids Cook Monday, and Caregivers' Monday.

You can contact The Monday Campaigns here to object to the inclusion of the outrageous, so-called Man up Mondays in its campaign.

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