A report by the American Life League’s Stop Planned Parenthood International (STOPP) debunks myths about the abortion giant. Planned Parenthood Federation of America: A 5-Part Analysis of Business Practices, Community Outcomes, and Taxpayer Funding argues that “three primary rationales used for taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood – women’s wellness, reduction of teen pregnancy, and serving the poor – are all invalid.”
Planned Parenthood justifies its role in public health through the provision of “safe sex” education and contraceptives to adolescents, which is supposed to decrease teen pregnancies. The decline in teen pregnancy in 16 counties of the Texas Panhandle region, which were once home to 19 Planned Parenthood facilities, however, shows otherwise. In 1996, the teen pregnancy rate was 43.6 per 1,000 girls from 13 to 17 years old. As the number of facilities declined, the teen pregnancy rate shrunk and in 2010, two years after the last two centres disaffiliated, the Texas Panhandle reached its lowest ever teen pregnancy rate at 24.1.
While receiving an 11.3 per cent increase in taxpayer money from 2010 to 2012 nationwide and $542 million from different levels of government, Planned Parenthood’s services have decreased at the same time and are now at their lowest levels since 2006. Contraceptive client services fell 15 per cent from 2007 to 2011. In fact, Planned Parenthood inflated its number of female clients acquiring contraceptives by as much as 11 per cent to receive more government reimbursement according to the STOPP study. Its cancer screening and prevention services, including manual breast examinations and PAP smears, fell 29 per cent from 2009 to 2011.
The federal Food and Drug Administration confirmed in 2012 that none of the Planned Parenthood facilities provide mammograms in response to a freedom of information request by the Alliance Defense Fund, contrary to statements made by President Barack Obama and Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards during the Obamacare debates and 2012 presidential election.
The number of Planned Parenthood facilities in the U.S. providing abortions, though, has increased every year since 2005 according to the report. In 2012, 47 per cent of its facilities did abortions, up from 43 per cent in 2011. Beginning this year Planned Parenthood now requires that every affiliate has at least one site providing medical or surgical abortions. According to the authors of the report, this runs contrary to the organization’s recent attempts to rebrand itself as a woman’s health provider.
The number of abortions in the US has declined since its all-time high of 1.6 million in 1990, but Planned Parenthood’s have peaked in 2011 at 333,964. An estimated 56.9 per cent of non-government income to its facilities in 2011 came from abortions. “PPFA mathematically shrinks 56.9 percent of its clinic revenue to “three percent of medical services” by counting surgical abortions the same as STD tests, writing prescriptions, and so on,” explain the report. “In this way, PPFA uses 10 million mundane medical tasks such as blood tests to mask the extent of its only growth – abortion services.”
Rita Diller, one of the authors of the report, said in a news release, “the abortion giant’s taxpayer income has increased 76 percent over the past six years, yet its ‘healthcare services’ plummet as it concentrates on its ever-increasing abortion business. It is time to totally and permanently defund the abortion giant.”
