Girls Scouts USA in Bed with Big Abortion

*2019 UPDATE: See the latest pro-abortion actions from GSUSA from former Girl Scouts on MyGirlScoutCouncil.com. 

*2016 UPDATE: The Archdiocese of St. Louis announced it is severing ties with Girl Scouts USA because of its leftist positions and actions on contraception and abortion. Since we originally published this article, many of the source documents from GSUSA and its parent organization, WAGGGS, have been deleted. We’ve provided links via the internet archives where possible. Even OpenSecrets.org removed all mentions of donations of GSUSA’s CEO Anna Maria Chávez. 

My sisters were girl scouts. And they loved it. I remember how they would come home singing songs I’ve never heard, breaking into harmony, and laughing about a jingle with billboards and flow-through tea bags. Do-Si-Dos (my personal favorite) and other sugary goodness were a reminder of how sweet it was that my sisters were involved in Girl Scouts.

They didn’t earn badges advocating for “reproductive rights” or bring home books celebrating pro-abortion activists like Gloria Steinem, Wendy Davis, or NARAL/NOW founder Betty Friedan (who also served as a GSUSA Board member).

But time has a way of corrupting good and noble founding principles. The devolution of Girl Scouts USA, which heavily relies upon the massive $790 million it pulls in with its annual cookie sales, is glaringly evident for those who choose to look. And yes, while it’s true that most cookie sale dollars stay with their local council/troops, one third of all cookie sales are paid to the bakers for the production and shipping of the cookies. Then, Girl Scouts USA gets paid millions in license fees from those bakers depending on the total sum of individual councils’ cookie sales. The more cookies sold, the more money the national Girl Scouts organization makes.

The Radiance Foundation joins many other concerned organizations and parents, across the nation, in the www.CookieCott.com to raise awareness of GSUSA’s radical pro-abortion and anti-family actions and policies.

(Please see these other great resources to help you better understand GSUSA’s undeniable ties to Big Abortion and the leftist agenda: GirlScoutsWhyNot.com & MyGirlScoutCouncil.com)

Sure, sure, sure. GSUSA disingenuously states on their website that they don’t partner with Planned Parenthood. And we know that simply saying something is true, makes it true. It reminds me of another organization that claims it is neutral on the abortion issue–the NAACP–yet actively partners with Planned Parenthood—the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. But, they said they’re neutral on the issue, so it must be true. At The Radiance Foundation, we’re more concerned about what an organization does than what it claims to believe.

In response to the national CookieCott, Girl Scouts USA dishonestly posted on their website: “A fundamental piece you should know is that Girl Scouts does not advocate one way or another with regard to what we perceive as private issues best handled by families. Personal matters are just that—personal and private—and should be addressed accordingly. We ask that adults keep adult conversations to themselves. Approaching girls with salacious materials at a cookie sale is not acceptable.”

Telling the truth about abortion isn’t “salacious”. But infusing sexually explicit materials into Girl Scouts events, and promoting abortion issues and activists via social media and “Journeys” booklets is perfectly ok. By the way, no one is advocating lecturing a Girl Scout at the cookie stand. It’s about educating adults, in the proper forum, about what GSUSA represents. These hard-working scouts are precious and their parents deserve much more transparency and less abortion ideology from the national organization. (Concerned parents have the option of alternatives like American Heritage Girls or Frontier Girls.)

The former GSUSA CEO (2011-2016), Anna Maria Chávez, has a long list of pro-abortion advocacy and supporting 100% NARAL-approved politicians. In fact, Chávez lists Janet Napolitano as her mentor in her bio, ironically praising the radically pro-abortion governor’s efforts to “fight for those who can’t fight for themselves.” Napolitano vetoed the partial birth abortion ban while governor of Arizona.

There’s no question where GSUSA’s CEO’s ideology lies. During Chávez’ time as President of Girl Scout Council of Southwest Texas, she was the keynote speaker in an event where her council partnered with numerous abortion groups including Planned Parenthood. But Girl Scouts doesn’t “partner” with Planned Parenthood.

She is merely one of many in GSUSA leadership (h/t 100QuestionsForTheGirlScouts.org) who espouse a pro-abortion, anti-family worldview. Can anyone name a single conservative, pro-life, individual that GSUSA has ever offered as a role model (other than Mother Teresa or Susan B. Anthony whose prolife worldview the organization doesn’t even mention)? How about Star Parker, Jeannie Mancini, Michelle Malkin, Dr. Alveda King, Laura Ingraham, Lila Rose, Justice Janice Rogers Brown, or the congresswoman who provided the response to the President’s State of the Union, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers? These are all incredibly accomplished women (most are mothers) who have made the world a better place.

It’s black history month. How about Dr. Mildred Jefferson? She rose above the racism and elitism of eugenics as well as gender discrimination to became the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Jefferson was awarded 28 honorary degrees from prestigious institutions. Oh, but wait, she was also the co-founder of the National Right to Life Committee. That’s doesn’t fit with the GSUSA’s “progressive” worldview.

But Wendy Davis, who was never on the Girl Scouts’ radar until she stood in pink sneakers and demanded that babies be aborted after 5 months development, jumps to the top of the list for little girls to emulate.

Of course, GSUSA’s actions go beyond association. Normally, people and organizations are “guilty by association”, yet liberals rely upon people being oblivious to these associations. Little known is GSUSA’s membership in The National Council For Research on Women (NCRW), a policy and research group that adamantly promotes abortion, homosexuality and transexuality. On its website, it promotes other radical pro-abortion groups in its blogroll such as Feministing, Girl With A Pen, Ms. Blog, Our Bodies Our Blog, Racialicious, RH Reality Check, Third Wave Foundation, and Women’s Media Center (which GSUSA claims they’ve now removed references from in future publications of their “Journeys” booklets).  NCRW considers Wendy Davis a “Over-Night Liberal and Feminist Superstar” for “single-handedly defeating the strictest abortion bill in the country”.

GSUSA also makes up about one third of the membership of the Worldwide Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and provides huge amounts of funding for the organization, which is unapologetically pro-abortion. WAGGGS openly partners with the International Planned Parenthood Federation. (You know, the same organization that includes the China Family Planning Association, which is responsible for carrying out millions of forced abortions through its barbaric One Child policy.) WAGGGS promotes the incredibly disturbing, pro-abortion and anti-family Bali Global Youth Forum Declaration and boasts of its members’ involvement in helping to write it. This outrageous document demands (among many egregious things) that: “Government should…decriminalize sex work”. Why on earth are the Girl Scouts part of an organization that wants to legalize prostitution? Why are little girls automatically made members of this rabidly pro-abortion, anti-family, pro-anything-goes-sexually organization when they become Girl Scouts?

“Cultural and religious barriers such as parental and spousal consent, and early and forced marriages, should never prevent access to family planning, safe and legal abortion, and other reproductive health services—recognizing that young people have autonomy over their own bodies, pleasures and desires.” –Bali Global Youth Forum Declaration, pg 10.

We, as parents, apparently are the obstacles to the utopian world envisioned by girl scouts, via GSUSA and WAGGGS, around the world. All the while, GSUSA defends its membership in these organizations claiming it may not agree with every position they take. Well, if these organizations partnered with an Aryan nation or KKK chapter, there would be swift repudiation and massive PR distancing. But it’s Big Abortion and Planned Parenthood, so it’s family.

Give us your daughters, we’ll give you indoctrinated activists.

This is why cookies matter. We need to get over the sugary sweet addiction we have to an organization that serves up trefoils and thin mints as an opiate, hoping we won’t bother to look into the true ingredients of the national Girl Scout organization. Though individual troops and councils may argue they don’t partner with Big Abortion, each one of them is part of GSUSA’s radical, leftist DNA which aggressively promotes an ideology that’s not so sweet.