By Raimundo Rojas, Director
Hispanic Outreach
"We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs." Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, in a 1939 letter.
On March 8, Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), announced that she had appointed the Rev. Ignacio Castuera to the newly created post of chaplain. The nation's largest peddler of abortion now has a spiritual leader who will offer the "theological justification" for abortion.
In a press release PPFA wrote, "He will also be available to provide advice to volunteer and staff leadership on moral and ethical issues around our mission. In addition, Dr. Castuera [currently the senior pastor of St. John's United Methodist Church in Los Angeles] will work with affiliates to expand their relationships with religious leaders and organizations in their communities."
The fact that he is a Mexican-born Hispanic, and that this pro-abortion anointing comes during a time when Latinas are having a disproportionately larger number of abortions, is no accident.
PPFA tells us that the Rev. Castuera has been a member of its clergy advisory board since its inception in 1994 and is a frequent contributor to the pro-abortion religious network's publication, "Clergy Voices." PPFA says that the Rev. Castuera has also worked closely with the California Abortion Rights Action League and "was honored by the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights for his commitment to reproductive freedom."
If that weren't enough, the Rev. Castuera has served on the boards of several Planned Parenthood abortion clinics and spoke at the 1992 "March for Women's Lives."
In the 1990s the Rev. Castuera headed the Latina Outreach Project, a program designed specifically to target Hispanic families and promulgate Planned Parenthood's pro-death message to them.
He is a vigorous defender of the "morality" of abortion. Most recently, when asked to consider what Jesus's views on abortion would be, the Rev. Castuera said (according to "Clergy Voices"), "We can extrapolate from all the other life-affirming stories about Jesus... to conclude that Jesus would indeed support a woman's right to choose. More important is that his followers today continue to support choice, without seeking to impose such views on others."
Rev. Castuera also defended PPFA's obnoxious "Choice on Earth" Christmas cards.
PPFA hires a chaplain. Jesus is redefined as "pro-choice." It reads like something straight out of the "Left Behind" series.
Mark Tooley, director of the Institute of Religion and Democracy's United Methodist Action steering committee, told NRLNews, "Rev. Castuera [a United Methodist minister] and others who are willing to serve the cause of Planned Parenthood represent very much a limited aberration within Christianity."
Mr. Tooley believes that the hiring of Rev. Castuera may be an attempt to sow divisions within the Christian community. "Planned Parenthood is trying to show that Christianity is divided over the issue of abortion and that's why they have their clergy advisory board, and that's why they have the chaplain." In fact, Tooley says, "for 2,000 years Christianity has been almost entirely uniformly on the side of defending the sanctity of all human life, including unborn life."
Mr. Tooley also said that Rev. Castuera will not likely be censured by the United Methodist Church because the leadership of that church has supported abortion for the last three decades.
Pro-life Hispanics, although not surprised by this appointment, marvel at the blatant cynicism.
The executive director of Human Life International's Hispanic Division, Magaly Llaguno, said, "The hiring of Castuera by Planned Parenthood as its national chaplain is another link in the endless chain of deceptions of this pro-abortion organization."
Mrs. Llaguno continued, "To pretend to be a representative of Christ and, at the same time, a representative of a vicious killing business of unborn children is a manifest contradiction." The Hispanic community "is a community where the majority is pro-life."
And she's right. No opinion poll worth the cost of a phone call has ever shown anything other than that the vast majority of Hispanics in the United States are pro-life. In past articles in NRL News I have tried to explain how a community with such strong pro-life beliefs can be lured into having such large numbers of abortions.
One of the reasons is that Planned Parenthood finds people like Rev. Castuero who put a religious veneer on abortion.
We read that Rev. Castuera has been lauded as a hero and honored with several pro-abortion laurels for his "work in the Latino community." In truth what Rev. Castuera is doing is contributing to the demise of his people by perpetuating the lie that the best thing a Hispanic woman can do for her family and community is to abort her child.
This appointment is just one more transparent attempt at targeting minorities and is in keeping with the words of PPFA's founder: Planned Parenthood has indeed found a minister who "can straighten out that idea."
As pro-lifers, we need to combat this ongoing campaign against women of color and their babies. We must educate ourselves on the genesis of Planned Parenthood.
National Right to Life's Educational Trust Fund is a great resource for materials on Planned Parenthood. Educate your neighbors and friends and those who sit next to you in your pews.
The fact is that Planned Parenthood is the nation's largest abortion provider. The fact is that from the beginning Planned Parenthood targeted minority communities. The fact is that the Reverend Ignacio Castuera is only the latest of a long series of pro-abortion apologists who are completely out of touch with the Hispanic community.