Chicago—According to a new study released by the Guttmacher Institute, increased funding for Planned Parenthood has had no impact on the rate of unintended pregnancies across the nation, as Eric Scheidler, Executive Director of the Pro-Life Action League, stated in his latest commentary. Even more startling is the unintended pregnancy rate among poor women, which the Guttmacher report says has “increased dramatically.”
This data, released in August, reveals that despite a steady increase in government funding, topping $305 million by 2006, the nation’s largest abortion provider has made zero impact on one of the very problems they have used to justify these huge taxpayer-financed subsidies. In an August 24, 2011 Planned Parenthood press release in response to the study, the group’s president, Cecile Richards, skirted the issue, declaring, “There is no question that birth control prevents unintended pregnancy.”
Planned Parenthood provides over 330,000 abortions every year and brings in over a billion dollars annually, but is still fighting to protect its government subsidies—amounting to hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars sent to its clinics every year.
“Since 2001, the United States has not made progress in reducing unintended pregnancy. Rates increased for nearly all groups and remain high overall,” concluded Guttmacher researchers, Lawrence B. Finer and Mia R. Zolna, who authored the study.
This conclusion is particularly revealing, in light of the fact that the Guttmacher Institute was originally a division of Planned Parenthood, and still operates in supportive concert with the abortion provider.
“It’s crystal clear that Planned Parenthood utterly failed to reduce unintended pregnancy, despite their massive taxpayer subsidy,” observed Scheidler. He noted that the very group Planned Parenthood claims depends on them the most—poor women—experienced the most dramatic increase.
In a time of skyrocketing government deficits, he is quick to point out that continued funding of Planned Parenthood, which is not producing the very results for which it is being funded, means taxpayers are pouring money into a “sinkhole.” “As this new Guttmacher analysis unwittingly demonstrates,” explained Scheidler, “the time to defund this feckless organization is long overdue.”
Read Eric Scheidler’s commentary here.
For interviews with Eric Scheidler, please contact Tom Ciesielka, at 312.422.1333 or tc@tcpr.net.
