• • Kansas City Archdiocese Breaks Ties With Girl Scouts, Cites Planned Parenthood, Radical Feminists
• • The Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood

(CNSNews.com) -- Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann announced on May 1 that the Catholic churches in his archdiocese would be transitioning away from the secularist Girl Scouts to the Christian-based American Heritage Girls, citing in part the national Girl Scouts' support for the international Girl Scouts, which is tied to Planned Parenthood, which promotes contraception and abortion.

Archbishop Naumann also noted the Girl Scouts' promotion as role models the eugenicist Margaret Sanger, who founded Planned Parenthood, as well as the radical feminists Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem. 

"Our greatest responsibility as a church is to the children and young people in our care," said the archbishop in a May 1 statement. "We have a limited time and number of opportunities to impact the formation of our young people. It is essential that all youth programs at our parishes affirm virtues and values consistent with our Catholic faith."

"With the promotion by Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA) of programs and materials reflective of many of the troubling trends in our secular culture, they are no longer a compatible partner in helping us form young women with the virtues and values of the Gospel," said Archbishop Naumann.

"The national organization, for example, contributes more than a million dollars each year to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGS), an organization tied to International Planned Parenthood and its advocacy for legislation that includes both contraception and abortion as preventive health care for women," he said. 

"Margaret Sanger, Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem are frequently held up in materials as role models for young Scouts," said the archbishop.  "These as well as many other 'role models' in the GSUSA's new manuals and web content not only do not reflect our Catholic worldview but stand in stark opposition to what we believe."

Consequently, the archbishop has directed his priests and lay workers to start transitioning from the Girl Scouts.  Different parishes, churches, and schools may abruptly end all work with the Girl Scouts or slowly transition out as young women graduate from the program. 

About 205,000 Catholics live in the archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas. There are 120 parishes in the archdiocese and seven high schools. 

The alternative formation group being offered in the archdiocese is the American Heritage Girls, which is described as "the premier national character development organization for girls 5-18 that embraces Christian values and encourages family involvement."   (See video.)  Their mission reads, "Building women of integrity through service to God, family, community and country."

American Heritage Girls' programs for kindergartners must be in place for the fall 2017 at parishes, said the archbishop. 

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The information in this section will show that a number of Girl Scout councils have partnered with or currently partner with Planned Parenthood Federation of America to provide controversial sexuality education to girls. It will also show numerous other ways the Girl Scouts connects girls to people, organizations or websites that promote Planned Parenthood.

Background Facts:

• In addition to being the largest abortion provider in the United States, Planned Parenthood Federation of America [hereafter, Planned Parenthood] is also one of the leading purveyors in the U.S. of explicit "comprehensive sexuality education" for youth. (Click here to learn more about comprehensive sexuality education and how it undermines the values many parents are trying to teach their daughters.)
   
• Planned Parenthood also helped co-found and is a member association of International Planned Parenthood Federation(IPPF), which in addition to being one of the largest abortion providers in the world, is one of the leading purveyors of "comprehensive sexuality education" internationally.
   
• Click here to see International Planned Parenthood's "Exclaim!" publication which provides a good summary of the philosophies and positions of both organizations wherein it states, "young people understand that they are entitled to sexual pleasure and how to experience different forms of sexual pleasure is important for their health and well-being." It also states among other things that "Governments must respect, protect and fulfill all sexual rights for young people."
   
• Since Planned Parenthood believes that children have a right to sexual pleasure, they provide graphic instruction in their various publications and websites on multiple ways youth can obtain sexual pleasure. (See IPPF's "Healthy, Happy, and Hot"brochure.)

Question: Why, in official statements of policy, does Girl Scouts headquarters continue to mislead the public by repeatedly insisting they do not partner with or have a relationship with Planned Parenthood without clearly disclosing the relationships many of their councils have had or currently have with this controversial organization?

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The Story of American Heritage Girls

Once upon a time there was a mother who loved her four children very much. She lived in Ohio with her husband, three daughters, and one son. She was a committed volunteer with the Girl Scouts, because she believed strongly that scouting programs build character. She wanted her daughters to experience outdoor activities such as camping, and develop leadership, character, and social skills in the safe environment of an all-girl program. She was also a committed Christian who strived to help the girls in her troop know the Lord. She saw her leadership and volunteerism as her ministry, a way to be a light to young women who might not otherwise have a way to hear the gospel. She was educated as a teacher, so she had a special place in her heart for youth and "training them up in the way they should go" (Proverbs 22:6).

Around the year 1995, she became uneasy with the way her troop was asked to handle matters of faith. Patti, for that was her name, had always loved the part of the promise about serving God. This part of the promise was made optional, with an asterisk added next to "God" and members free to substitute in any word they liked instead. She started to hear troubling reports of camps that taught sexual ethics against what she read in the Bible. Hoping to reform the problems from the inside out, Patti did her best to raise awareness and find satisfactory answers, even forming a committee to this end with other concerned moms, but her repeated efforts to raise her concerns and be heard were met with silence and sometimes even disdain from the leaders above her. Eventually, she sadly realized that things were not going to change, at least, not in a direction she wished to follow with her girls.

Watching television one night with her husband, he asked her the fateful question, "Well, what are you going to do about it?" Instead of accepting defeat, after much prayer, Patti Garibay decided to start a Christ-centered group for her daughters and her friends. She gathered other parents around her kitchen table, including her best friend Laurie Cullen, and together they dreamed and brainstormed about what they really wanted for their daughters, and what kind of program would best guide their precious girls to grow up into women of integrity who loved God. The result was the first-ever AHG Troop, composed entirely of 4th and 5th graders.

Though Patti hadn't intended to replicate the group, before long, others heard about it and wanted to know how they could start their own. Handbooks, Badge requirements, and trainings soon followed. Girls sewed their own uniforms as part of AHG's first Badge, the sewing Badge, which they had to write themselves, of course.

Troops popped up all over the country as the news of a Christ-centered, faith-based, scouting-type program spread. AHG leadership went from a handful of parents around a table volunteering their time and rotating the phone bill monthly to make ends meet to a large office space with 50+ paid staff. Small seeds of hope grew into mighty oaks of tradition. AHG experienced an especially big membership increase in 2010 when they became the first all-girl program to partner with the Boy Scouts of America, a partnership that later ended when BSA changed their membership standards. Parents clamored for a BSA alternative, and AHG used their resources to help connect and mobilize these parents to form a faith-based scouting-type program for boys known as Trail Life USA.