Planned Parenthood

While Planned Parenthood officials claim that abortions constitute only 4% percent of their services, this figure is misleading. Out of the 9.8 million individual services they provided in 2018, 345,672 were abortions—roughly 4%. But this figure fails to account for the fact that a woman visiting Planned Parenthood for an abortion will receive several services—from a pregnancy test to some manner of counseling to the abortion itself—each of which is counted separately.

A closer look at Planned Parenthood’s client and income numbers shows that the abortion figure is actually more than three times what they claim. Out of 2.4 million Planned Parenthood clients in 2018, 14% got abortions. Moreover, abortion accounts for at least a third of Planned Parenthood’s total non-government paid income from clinic services.

• See also How much money does Planned Parenthood make on abortion? and Does Planned Parenthood require all its affiliates to provide abortions?

Planned Parenthood’s income from abortion in 2018 was approximately $180 million.

• See also What is Planned Parenthood’s annual budget?

Since abortion was made legal across the United States in 1973, hundreds of women have been killed as a direct consequence of abortion, many of them at Planned Parenthood facilities.

In one example, a Planned Parenthood clinic in Chicago, Illinois, perforated the uterus of a 24-year-old woman named Tonya Reaves, leading to her death from hemorrhage. No 911 call was ever placed by Planned Parenthood, and there was an inexplicable delay of over five hours between the abortion and her admission to the ER. Her family sued Planned Parenthood for malpractice and received a $2 million settlement in 2014.

Moreover, Planned Parenthood consistently resists state measures that would make their centers safer by requiring them to conform to the same safety standards as other surgical centers—standards which in most states are not imposed on abortion facilities.

Planned Parenthood is comprised of a national headquarters—the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA)—and 49 affiliates across the United States. Each Planned Parenthood affiliate operates local facilities in a given state or region. In all, the affiliates operate over 600 individual facilities.

The Planned Parenthood Global program—not to be confused with the International Planned Parenthood Federation, a separate organization—operates in 10 countries in Africa and Latin America. Planned Parenthood operates its own facilities in these countries as well as partnering with existing medical institutions to advance contraception and abortion in the developing world.

Finally, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Political Action Committee lobbies on behalf of Planned Parenthood’s agenda in the halls of government, seeking to keep abortion unrestricted by law, win funding for Planned Parenthood affiliates, and support pro-choice candidates.

The annual budget of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates for fiscal year 2018-2019 was $1,638,600,000—over one and a half billion dollars.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates received $616,800,000 in taxpayer dollars during the 2018-2019 fiscal year, the most recent year for which data is available. Public funds thus constitute over one third of Planned Parenthood’s annual budget.

Planned Parenthood lists adoption referrals as one of the services they provide, but evidence from their own internal reporting reveals that adoption is a very low priority for them. For 2018, Planned Parenthood reported only one adoption referral for every 80 abortions. In one annual report, they didn’t even list the number of adoption referrals.

• See also How many children have you adopted? There are too many unwanted children now!

In 2010, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America mandated that all its state and regional affiliates provide abortions by 2013, regardless of whether or not abortions were readily avail-able elsewhere in their areas of operation. Some Planned Parenthood affiliates chose to sever ties with the organization rather than implement the new policy, which would have required them to duplicate existing local abortion services at the expense of their limited resources.

• See also: How many abortions does Planned Parenthood perform each year?, and How much money does Planned Parenthood make on abortion?

Planned Parenthood opposes all abstinence education programs. In spite of the growing evidence that such programs are highly effective, Planned Parenthood actively opposes any program endorsing the message that sex should be reserved exclusively for marriage.

They insist that such issues as premarital sex, contraception, masturbation, homosexuality, and abortion must be presented as personal choices without any inherent moral character.

Planned Parenthood strongly opposes laws requiring parental involvement in minor girls’ abortions, even though such laws are supported by 71% of the American public.

Though parental approval is required for a minor girl to get her ears pierced or take an aspirin dispensed by the school nurse, Planned Parenthood insists parents have no right to know if their daughters get abortions.

• See also What legal restrictions on abortion have states enacted?

There is mounting evidence that Planned Parenthood facilities routinely fail to report cases of statutory rape and child sex trafficking.

They have even been caught coaching underage girls on how to procure abortions while avoiding mandatory reporting and parental involvement laws.

Undercover videos gathered by independent investigators suggest this may be standard Planned Parenthood practice nationwide.

Planned Parenthood officials frequently claim that they want to reduce abortion by providing contraceptives, but the belief that making contraceptives widely available will reduce abortion is not supported by the facts.

• See also If you really want to reduce abortion, why don’t you hand out contraceptives?

Planned Parenthood officials frequently declare that one of their central missions is to provide high-quality, low-cost contraceptives, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

Condoms distributed by Planned Parenthood were rated among the worst available in a study by Consumer Reports magazine. And Planned Parenthood has been exposed for dramatically overcharging their clients for Plan B emergency contraception; pills purchased for $4.25 to $4.50 were resold for $25 to $32—a markup of 400-600%.

• See also If you really want to reduce abortion, why don’t you hand out contraceptives?

Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a strong advocate of eugenics—the policy of preventing certain races, classes or groups from procreating in order to “improve” the genetic stock of a society.

Sanger wrote about the need to control the population of blacks and other minorities through contraception and sterilization. In her 1932 “Plan for Peace,” Sanger stated that the U.S. should “keep the doors of immigration closed to the entrance of certain aliens whose condition is known to be detrimental to the stamina of the race.”

Sanger has also been criticized for speaking on birth control to the Women’s Auxiliary of the Ku Klux Klan in Silver Lake, New Jersey in 1926.

While Planned Parenthood today repudiates racism, they continue to target their services disproportionately to minority populations.

While blacks comprise only 13% of the population, 28% of women in the United States having abortions are black, due in no small part to Planned Parenthood’s conscious placement of many of their facilities in neighborhoods primarily populated by minorities.

In fact, more blacks are killed in the womb at Planned Parenthood facilities in three days than were lynched by the Ku Klux Klan in their entire history.

An undercover investigation in 2008 showed Planned Parenthood officials across the country gladly accepting donations being offered by a man who claimed he specifically wanted his donation to go towards abortions for black women, in order to reduce the black population.

Planned Parenthood has launched a nationwide campaign to create a more hip, upscale image and appeal to a wealthier, suburban clientele. One Planned Parenthood official told the Wall Street Journal that Planned Parenthood wants to become the “Lens Crafters of family planning.”

In recent years they have concentrated on building more upscale facilities in suburban locations, rather than the low-cost facilities in urban centers they emphasized in past decades.