The president of the largest abortion provider in the US has been ousted from her role apparently over a conflict of opinion on the direction of the organisation and her messaging strategy.
Leana Wen, the first leader of Planned Parenthood to ever be a medical doctor, was terminated during a secret meeting of the group's board on Tuesday, reports say.
She has only held the job for eight months, following Cecile Richards who led the group from 2006 to 2018.
In a tweet Tuesday, Wen revealed that her termination had come as a surprise to her and that she had been engaged in "good faith negotiations" with the Planned Parenthood board about her leaving the organisation.
"I just learned that the @PPFA Board ended my employment at a secret meeting," she wrote on Twitter. "We were engaged in good faith negotiations about my departure based on philosophical differences over the direction and future of Planned Parenthood."
Wen followed up with a statement and a letter, stating that the priority of the board is to "double down on abortion advocacy" while her priority is to provide healthcare to underserved women.
"With the landscape changing dramatically in the last several months and the right to safe, legal abortion care under attack like never before, I understand the shift in the Board's prioritization," she said in her letter.
She said that she is proud of her work and would always stand with the organization.
Wen's tenure at the helm of the organization comes at a time when abortion has risen to the surface of American politics as conservative state legislatures pass heavy restrictions like heartbeat bills, and as liberal states adopt legislation permitting abortion until the moment of birth.
Much of Wen's messaging of the issue framed abortion in healthcare terms rather than political language, something that apparently led to her firing. Multiple reports speculate that the board terminated her employment because she was not sufficiently aggressive given the particular political season, with abortion being restricted in states across the South and Midwest.
Citing two sources, Buzzfeed reported Tuesday that Wen refused to use "trans-inclusive" language such as saying "people" instead of "women". Wen also reportedly told staff that she thought that speaking about transgender issues would "isolate people in the Midwest". At many locations, the abortion giant dispenses cross-sex hormones for transgender and nonbinary-identified persons.
In response to Wen's announcement that the Planned Parenthood board had ended her employment, Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, tweeted that dissent is not allowed and the abortion giant will only ever be about abortion.
Such disregard for everything else is "why hundreds of workers are leaving the abortion industry, & why millions more Americans are becoming pro-life", Rose said.
Courtesy of The Christian Post
