After my post detailing the news of Planned Parenthood handing Girl Scouts outrageously offensive sex-ed literature at a UN workshop, a commenter posted a reproval of me for not checking my facts. This person, writing under the pseudonym Catholic Leader, reported a GSUSA refutation to the widespread reports.
What follows is Catholic Leader’s comment and my rebuttal, complete with data to the contrary.
Catholic Leader
Below is the official GSUSA Response. It’s too bad that people don’t check up on the “facts” listed in a lot of these Blog sites.
The Girls Only Workshop that Girl Scouts of the USA recently co-sponsored at the United Nations was supervised by adults and included no distribution of any brochure or collateral of any kind. The only participants were adults from GSUSA, Girls Learn International and The Grail, as well as 30-35 teenage girls. No materials were handed out.
The Girls Only Workshop was jointly hosted by Girl Scouts of the USA, UNICEF’s Working Group on Girls, Girls Learn International and The Grail as part of the 54th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations. The workshop was a group conversation conducted to formulate a document that would express girls’ perspectives on global issues affecting girls.
The Girl Scout organization does not take a position on family planning. Our membership is a cross-section of America with regard to opinions on religious and social issues and practices. We believe these matters are best decided by girls and their families.
The Girl Scout organization has no affiliation with any political organization.
Girl Scouts of the USA has never had a relationship with Planned Parenthood
Dr. Nadal
The GSUSA document is a bald-faced lie. There, I said it. The person who concocted that document has a black tongue and an even blacker heart. The following links show that there have been all kinds of collaborative efforts between the two groups. The document quoted by Catholic Leader is full of parsed language and lies by omission.
Here is Austin Ruse on what happened last week in NYC.
Then there is this admission from a March 5, 2004 Today show interview with Kathy Cloniger, CEO of Girl Scouts:
“HOLT: But you call it bullying. Did it not work? In fact, the Girl Scouts have ended this relationship?
“MS. CLONINGER: The Girl Scouts in Waco, Texas, really made a decision based on local community context, they decided that in this particular situation that it would be in the best interest of girls and their families to discontinue the relationship with Planned Parenthood. Girl Scouts is the largest voice for, and advocate for girls across the country. Know that girls grow up with very complex issues facing them. And so we do, across the country, tackle the issues of human sexuality and body image and all of the thing that’s girls are facing. And we partner with many organizations. We have relationships with our church communities, with YWCAs, and with Planned Parenthood organizations across the country, to bring information-based sex education programs to girls. “
I could go on and will if people want. However, a Google search of GSUSA and Planned Parenthood will yield a bumper crop of reading about the extent of the local GSUSA Councils relationships with PP.
Alternatives to this nest of vipers in the next post tonight.
Coming Home 
A google search of “Girl Scouts USA” and “Planned Parenthood” does indeed serve up several pages of sites, all of which appear to be using almost identical language to assert the same charges, all obviously quite committed to promulgating this position. That doesn’t mean it is false, but that is hardly supporting authority — it is endemic on the web that partisans of almost any position quote each other over and over and over. Liberals do it, conservatives do it, militant moderates do it.
The only exception in the first five pages was Wikipedia, hardly my choice for reliable and objective hard data, but at least this paragraph was footnoted:
Although GSUSA is not nationally aligned with the reproductive health organization Planned Parenthood, Girl Scout councils may choose to have connections to the organization.[56] In 2004, in Waco, Texas, the Bluebonnet Council endorsed a Planned Parenthood education event (which did not mention abortion) but did not provide money nor send Scouts to it. This was criticized by some pro-life movement supporters and social conservatives, resulting in a boycott of Girl Scout cookies sold by the Bluebonnet Council. Although Waco residents responded to the announced boycott by purchasing a record amount of cookies, the Bluebonnet Council removed their endorsement.[57] The pro-life group states that 20% of the investigated councils have some connection to Planned Parenthood though that includes councils that have endorsed events that Planned Parenthood also endorsed.[58]
Not being an expert on the subject, it seems reasonably credible that there have been some cooperative endeavors, but that they are probably not as endemic as the loudest critics insinuate, nor are they as innocent as Girl Scout leadership denials imply.
Snopes.com has nothing on this word combination.