The Meaning of the Mergers

So what do all the mergers, closings, and openings mean? As noted yesterday, although supposed to be a service oriented non-profit organization, Planned Parenthood, in truth, is engaging in very aggressive corporate restructuring to prune non-performing clinics and affiliates, reduce expensive middle management, and maximize the most profitable aspects of its business. In the parlance of business, especially applicable in this case, Planned Parenthood is making itself "leaner and meaner."

PPFA presents itself as a non-profit that puts a priority on women’s reproductive health. But PPFA closes clinics when there is less of a demand for services and inadequate income to justify costly staff or facilities. If a larger, better staffed, better equipped location is nearby, the convenience of clients takes a backseat to the corporate bottom line.

Whenever and wherever Planned Parenthood senses a lucrative untapped market, new clinics will be opened,. Replacing an express location in a strip mall (which may sell a couple of cheap contraceptive packs a week) with a mega-clinic performing several $400 abortions a day may not mean a better community but it does mean a better balance sheet.

Although certain affiliates have complained about reduced government funding, it is not as if Planned Parenthood is strapped for cash. Total revenues for the national organization were $902.8 million in fiscal year ending June 30, 2006. Thirty-four percent of that, or $305.1 million, came from "Government Grants and Contracts."

While funding of affiliates in individual states may be affected by legislative or judicial activity, the charge that, nationally, Planned Parenthood is being crippled by government funding cuts can only be seen as a calculated ruse.

Checking previous Planned Parenthood annual reports, we see that the figure for government funding nationwide has risen each year at least as far back as 2001. But histrionics about funding shortfalls and closing clinics because of “government cutbacks” make for good fundraising letters, and help generate pressure on legislators to open the spigot wider.

While legally a non-profit, those government funds have enabled Planned Parenthood to offer its corporate officers comfortable compensation. The salary of current PPFA president Cecile Richards salary wasn’t listed on PPFA’s 2005 tax return, but past president Gloria Feldt received over $935,000 in total salary and benefits for that year.

Salaries of other PPFA top national officers listed on that return ranged from $106,000 to $258,000. These do not appear to be affected by the mergers.

What the consolidations do is allow Planned Parenthood to cut out a lot of its less productive middle management without jettisoning its top regional performers. Heads of affiliates that haven't produced will be gone, while those like Chicago’s Steve Trombley, who pushed through Aurora’s controversial new abortion mega-clinic, will be retained and promoted to head the new state affiliate.

Planned Parenthood has tried to minimize the importance of abortion to the organization, but abortion easily accounts for at least 31% of the organization’s national clinic income.* Those clinics that offer abortions have the potential for higher income. Condoms and pills go for less than $20, but each abortion means hundreds of dollars.

Because of the relative cost of services, the more clinics that offer abortions, the more that add abortion to their list of services, the greater the income potential. This explains, in a business sense, both the reason behind the recent construction of several abortion mega-clinics and Planned Parenthood’s push to see more of its non-surgical clinics offer RU486, the abortion pill.

Joyce Harant, head of one of the Illinois affiliates undergoing consolidation, told the Lincoln Courier that the merger reflects a long-term trend. She told The Courier there were 180 or 190 Planned Parenthood national affiliates when she started in 1979, but said that number will be down to 105 or 110 of them when this latest merger is completed (2/8/08).

In one sense, it is encouraging to know that dwindling business and public exposure of Planned Parenthood’s agenda has caused many of these affiliates and their clinics to close. But ever-increasing numbers of abortions, steadily rising incomes, mega-building projects, and splashy mergers are a warning that the abortion giant is not fading, but becoming a more efficient killing machine.

This ruthlessness is at odds with the carefully-crafted image of compassion and concern for women that Planned Parenthood has invested so much money to maintain. This provides an opening for pro-lifers to share the facts. The more the public knows about abortion and the methods and motives of the abortion industry, the more money – and more lives – will be saved from the clinics and their coffers.

* With the average cost a woman pays for a standard surgical abortion at 10 weeks being $413 and Planned Parenthood performing 264,943 abortions a year, the income from abortion for Planned Parenthood is at least $109,421,459 against the organizations total clinic income of $345.1 million. With many Planned Parenthood clinics advertising and performing more expensive chemical or later term abortions, that number and the relevant percentage of clinic income are certainly much higher.