Two teen girls who dedicated years to the Girl Scouts USA (GSUSA) have gone public with their decision to leave the popular girls’ organization out of alarm over its ties to Planned Parenthood.
Tess Volanski, 14, and Sydney Volanski, 15, say they decided to leave their Girl Scout Troop after eight years, and they describe their process of disillusionment in their blog Speak Now: girl scouts.
“Leaving Girl Scouts was not a casual, easy, or convenient decision,” say the girls. “Girl Scouts was a huge part of our lives that included a bond with our best friends.”
The girls write on the blog that “the first eye-opening, and quite honestly, jaw-dropping, example” of GSUSA’s acceptance of Planned Parenthood’s (PP) ideology was the organization’s involvement in a United Nations workshop that distributed the PP sex education pamphlet “Happy, Healthy, and Hot.”
The pamphlet instructs young girls not to think of sex as “just about vaginal or anal intercourse.” “There is no right or wrong way to have sex. Just have fun, explore and be yourself!” it states. Although a representative of the Girl Scouts denied that the pamphlet was distributed at the meeting, the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, which broke the story, stood by their report and pointed out that a stack of the pamphlets was found in the conference room where the meeting was held moments after it ended.
Sydney said in an interview with Concerned Women for America that later the girls discovered that The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts “had a post on their website demanding safe, affordable, and accessible abortions for women as young as I am, 15.”
Although GSUSA states that it has no position on abortion, the girls point to a video in which Girl Scouts CEO Kathy Cloninger says the group partners with Planned Parenthood to bring girls “information-based sex education.”
The girls also quote Abby Johnson, a former local director of a Texas Planned Parenthood, who confirmed, “Girl Scouts of America supports Planned Parenthood.” “Most of PP’s adolescent health material is sponsored by [GSUSA]…it has their logo on it,” Johnson said. Johnson also noted that girls can work toward earning a badge by volunteering for the abortion giant.
On the girls’ blog they also list several other incidents where GSUSA has promoted Planned Parenthood or a pro-abortion, pro-contraception feminism either directly or indirectly.
Robin Marty, a pro-abortion writer for RH Reality Check, accused the girls of simply repeating what their mother, Christy Volanski, has said in Facebook postings and other venues about Girl Scouts and abortion.
But Sydney tells LifeSiteNews.com, “we have passion for the pro-life cause on our own.”
“We are old enough so that we can form our own opinions. Teenagers are not all as apathetic as society seems to think; we can care enough about something to take action,” said the teen in an email. “This is something that we cared about, so we took action and made this website because we wanted to.”
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