Girl Scout moms participating in the national Girl Scout cookie boycott released a video Thursday calling Girl Scout CEO Anna Marie Chavez “misleading and deceitful.”
The moms are responding to a YouTube video released by Anna Marie Chavez last week that was intended to quell a growing protest movement coming during the crucial annual cookie-buying season.
In her video, Chavez bluntly states the Girl Scouts stand committed to “serving God.”
The moms’ video claims this assertion is only made “when it is convenient” and points out that duty to God in the Girl Scouts “is optional.”
Chavez claims the Girl Scouts “have not now [nor] ever have had a relationship with Planned Parenthood.”
The moms’ video says this is “blatantly false” and points out how the Council level of Girl Scouts “has a long history of working with Planned Parenthood, with documented examples as far back as 1972 and continuing to 2013.”
The moms’ video asserts the Girl Scouts have consistently defended their relationships with Planned Parenthood, including former Girl Scout CEO Kathy Cloninger who admitted such relationships on the Today show in 2004. The video also points to a 2011 interview between a Girl Scout spokesman and CNS News in which the spokesman confirmed “that local councils may partner with whomever they choose, including Planned Parenthood.”
The video also connects Girl Scouts USA with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, of which every American Girl Scout is a member and to which the Girl Scouts of the USA gives more than $1 million a year. This group has a formal relationship with the International Planned Parenthood Federation.
Chavez insists that “reproductive issues are deeply private matters best left to families” and that she “finds it deeply unsettling that anyone would use the Girl Scout brand to have very adult conversations.”
The moms say the “hypocrisy of such a statement is unsettling considering the adult conversation topics that the Girl Scout organization exposes girls to,” including the Girl Scout promotion of Wendy Davis as 2013 Woman of the Year which specifically points to Davis’s filibuster of a late-term abortion bill.
The moms’ video also says for a merit badge the Girl Scouts encourage girls as young as eleven to study a speech by Margaret Sanger on women’s rights to birth control. They say the Girl Scout curriculum encourages girls to check out various non-profit groups that “explicitly advocate for sexual and reproductive rights,” including the Population Council, Amnesty International, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
The moms’ video concludes, “These statements by Chavez are deeply concerning and illustrate the Girl Scouts’ consistent practice of saying one thing and doing another.”
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