Details from Planned Parenthood's Latest Annual Report

Telling Stories about Abortion

By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D., and Dave Andrusko

While, thankfully, the number of abortions has been steadily declining in the U.S., business is thriving at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), the nation's largest abortion chain. At Planned Parenthood, a steadily increasing market share is the norm and ensuring and expanding "access to abortion services" is a top goal.

In the past decade the number of abortions in America has dropped sharply - - by some 17% - - to 1.3 million annually. By contrast, PPFA performed 182,854 abortions in 1999, an increase of 8% over 1998, which would be its highest total ever. Just one look at the annual report tells the reader that abortion is a large tributary of Planned Parenthood's financial stream.

In its 1999-2000 Annual Report, "Behind Every Choice Is a Story," we learn that Planned Parenthood brought in $627.2 million for the fiscal year that ended in June 2000.

"Clinic Income" is the biggest source of revenue, at $222.2 million. Abortion was by far Planned Parenthood's most common "surgical procedure," adding at least $54 million1 to PPFA's coffers - - thus accounting for nearly one-quarter (at a minimum) of PPFA's clinic income. [This is a very conservative figure, based on an average cost of $296 for first-trimester abortions only. We know PPFA clinics do later, more expensive abortions, but those figures are not readily available.]

As we have known for years, the government likes to send huge sums of money to PPFA. Planned Parenthood received $187.3 million, nearly a third (30%) of its income, from "Government Grants and Contracts" in 1999. Those are dollars from taxpayer's pockets that go to support various activities and aspects of Planned Parenthood's agenda. Planned Parenthood actually received slightly more from government sources than it did from "Private Contributions and Bequests" - - $174.9 million for the 1999-2000 fiscal year.

Planned Parenthood would have you believe it offers a wide array of medical services. Yet in 1999, it saw only about one-tenth as many prenatal clients (19,281) as abortion "patients," and made only 2,999 adoption referrals.

Planned Parenthood also saw only 516 infertility patients in 1999, or less than one infertility patient per clinic. Put another way, PPFA sold 354 abortions for every client to whom it gave infertility services. These gigantic disparities proved once again that Planned Parenthood's plans don't typically involve parenthood.

Where does all this money go? Nearly two-thirds (65%) of Planned Parenthood's 1999-2000 budget was spent on "Medical Services" ($367.5 million) with the rest of its expenses going to "Sexuality Education" ($31.8 million), "Public Policy" ($20.9 million), "Services to Affiliates" ($15.8 million), or "Services to the Field of Family Planning" ($15.8 million).

An additional $103.4 million went to "Supporting Services" such as management and general ($69.7 million) and fund-raising ($33.7 million), and another $14.2 million went to the Alan Guttmacher Institute and as part of "Payments to Related Organizations."

The report also indicates that Planned Parenthood spent $5.6 million on "International Family Planning Programs." This funds Planned Parenthood's Family Planning International Assistance (FPIA) program which "supports organizations that are committed to providing underserved populations with," among other "services," "safe abortion services for unintended pregnancies." Planned Parenthood said its FPIA-supported programs performed 1,305 abortions in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 2,908 abortions in Africa.

As noted, the theme of the 1999-2000 Annual Report is "Behind Every Choice is a Story." Indeed, the corners of many pages are filled with excerpts from women "telling their stories" about their own abortion experience and that of their friends.

The common denominator is that PPFA was there when they "needed" someone, and this motivated the women to support both Planned Parenthood, in particular, and the "pro-choice" movement, in general.

The report even solicits additional responses on a detachable postcard: "Tell us your story ... make it count!" women are told. "The reproductive rights movement has been propelled by our personal stories for more than 80 years. ... Sharing yours may help shape the future of our reproductive and sexual health movement."

But hype and self-congratulation aside, a careful reading of the numbers found in the annual report tells its own and quite different story, as do the details of a settlement recently reached in a botched-abortion case in San Francisco.

For example, some of the most important details of PPFA's "stories" are left out of its annual report. While the report talks of PPFA's role in the Supreme Court's 2000 Stenberg v. Carhart decision, which overturned Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortions, it never talks about partial-birth abortions. Not surprising, since partial-birth abortions are so stomach-turning even hardened pro-abortionists blanch.

Rather, the report asserts that the law "could have been used to ban all abortion procedures." The report also talks of how "Using PPFA's resource guide, The Supreme Court Looks at Choice, Planned Parenthood affiliate staffs increased public awareness that the right to abortion recognized by Roe v. Wade was in jeopardy."

Planned Parenthood also trumpets its efforts to prevent Congress from imposing "unnecessary restrictions" on "lifesaving technologies" using "fetal tissue and stem cell research in the fight against debilitating diseases such as juvenile diabetes, Parkinson's, and polio." While Planned Parenthood can not be blamed for not knowing some of the devastating side effects of fetal stem cell transplants recently detailed in the New England Journal of Medicine and the New York Times, it certainly was aware of one important detail conveniently left out of this story: certain Planned Parenthood clinics have a vested interest in fetal tissue research.

In a document received by Congress, PPFA mentioned that these clinics had rented part of their facilities to the fetal tissue collection firms who dissect and dismember the aborted babies Planned Parenthood supplies. In other words, financially, aborted babies are a "twofer." Not much chance that this gruesome traffic will make its way into the sterile pages of PPFA's annual report.

And there is one other "story" sure not to be included in PPFA's next annual report. "J.B." is a California woman who in February won a $672,610 settlement against a Planned Parenthood clinic for a botched 1997 abortion that left one of her twin unborn children alive. In a case that almost defies the imagination, the second baby was aborted more than two months later, when, after repeatedly being told that everything was normal, the 28-year-old J.B. discovered she was still pregnant. The sequence went as follows.

When J.B. returned for a check up after having undergone an abortion at the Planned Parenthood Golden Gate clinic in San Francisco, she was told that "she was fine, there were no complications," her attorney Chris Dolan told the Washington Times.

But J.B. still felt pregnant. After calling the clinic several times, she demanded a pregnancy test, the San Francisco Examiner reported. On February 18, 1998, a urine test showed that indeed there was still an unborn baby in her womb.

Now far into her second trimester, J.B. was shown a list of late-term abortion providers by Planned Parenthood Golden Gate staff, who then "and shooed her out the door," Dolan told the Examiner.

A sonogram taken at Buena Vista Women's Center revealed that her second baby was still alive. But one arm and one leg had been severed during the first abortion that took the life of the twin's sibling.

J.B. had been thinking of keeping the second baby until she saw the sonogram. "She sees the ultrasound and has an emotional collapse," said Dolan, according to the Examiner. "She has to go through a three-day procedure to terminate the fetus' life, something that absolutely wrecks her."

For its part, PPFA still appears unrepentant. "It's definitely going to be appealed," Lynn Stocker, attorney for the abortion clinic, told the Examiner. "Planned Parenthood disagrees with the verdict, and we will be appealing."

Under California law, J.B. will receive at most only a fraction of the figure settled on by the jury. Even if she receives the money, J.B. will need a long time to recover from her ordeal. Dolan said that since the abortions she "has been haunted by visions of babies being killed, has contemplated suicide, and cries uncontrollably at the sight of young children - - especially twins."

Sprinkled throughout PPFA's annual report are the names and pictures of celebrities such as actresses Kathleen Turner and Blythe Danner, comedian Al Franken, R&B artist Ginuwine, and John Irving, author of the abortion paean The Cider House Rules. No doubt the idea is to lend an aura of hipness and glamour to Planned Parenthood's cause and activities.

Yet no amount of glitz and glamour, no amount of spin or stories, changes this basic fact: Planned Parenthood is American's leading promoter and performer of abortion - - and abortion is still the destruction of innocent human life!

NOTE:

1. The Los Angeles Times (1/24/95) gave $296 as the average cost for a first-trimester abortion. Though we know Planned Parenthood now does chemical abortions, which may cost more, and that it has clinics which perform more expensive second-trimester abortions, the $296 figure translates into at least $54,124,784 in abortion income.