In the three years that have passed since Melissa Harris-Perry last spoke at a Planned Parenthood event, women’s reproductive rights have been repeatedly challenged. From the “personhood” amendments to the fight between Susan B. Komen For The Cure and Planned Parenthood, it has been a time of “distressing change,” she said at a luncheon held last week by Planned Parenthood Association of the Mercer Area.

The organization honored Tania Lawson-Johnston McCleery with the 2012 Sanger Circle Award for her commitment to Planned Parenthood. The award is given each year in recognition of founder Margaret Sanger’s contributions to the family planning movement.

“I don’t need to tell you all where we are at this moment,” said Ms. Harris-Perry, the keynote speaker at the sold-out spring benefit. Some 600 people came to the Hyatt-Princeton to hear the talk by Ms. Harris-Perry, who from 2006 to 2010 was an associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University. Now on the faculty at Tulane University, where she is founding director of the Anna Julia Cooper Project on Gender, Race, and Politics in the South, she also hosts her own weekend television show on MSNBC.

“People were feeling really good about what was going to happen with women’s reproductive rights,” said Ms. Harris-Perry, recalling her 2009 address to Planned Parenthood in San Diego. “It was very bi-partisan. I don’t think any of us in that room thought that three or four years later we’d be under attack.”

Chief among the challenges of the past three years was the news that the Komen organization had pulled breast exam funds from Planned Parenthood for political reasons. “That, to me, was the most heartbreaking,” Ms. Harris-Perry said. “We’ve all supported Komen. We’ve all worn the pink ribbons. It’s how I indicate my interest and concern for reproductive rights and breast health.”

Ms. Harris-Perry compared the division between the two organizations to her own differences in a debate she had with activist Gloria Steinem. The two women had clear differences, but their ultimate goals were similar. It is the same with Planned Parenthood and the Komen organization. “There was no winner of that fight,” Ms. Harris-Perry said. “Nobody wants to defeat Komen.”

Another particularly distressing development was President Barack Obama’s backing of the decision to prevent the Plan B emergency contraceptive from being sold over the counter to girls under 17. His instinctive reaction as a father of two daughters was that parents should be involved before girls resort to emergency contraception. “But that’s the point,” Ms. Harris-Perry said. “It’s not those daughters who we’re talking about.”

She credited her mother, a social worker who “was part of the abortion underground railroad” with helping to shape her own views. “From my early childhood, I learned that at the core of who we are and what we do is the protection of women’s rights and family rights,” she said.

Ms. Harris-Perry concluded her talk by announcing she was waiving her fee for the lecture. She urged the audience to continue their support for Planned Parenthood and other organizations devoted to women’s rights. “The current battle is not about saving babies. It is about shaming women. It’s particularly about poor women,” she said, are being shamed for going to Planned Parenthood for contraception. “We need matter-of-fact health education for girls and women. We need to have an awareness of the political conversation about women’s health.”