Over 10,000 more abortions:  New Abortion Record at Planned Parenthood in 2004
BY Randall K. O'Bannon

The full annual report isn’t out yet, but an online service report indicates that over a quarter of a million abortions were performed at Planned Parenthood clinics in 2004, a new record for the organization.

According to the service report, available at http://www. plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/medicalinfo/birthcontrol/fact-pp-services-2003.xml, affiliate clinics of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) performed 255,015 abortions in 2004. This represents an increase of over 10,000 abortions from last year’s total and makes Planned Parenthood responsible for about one out of every five abortions done in the United States.

By contrast, Planned Parenthood offered prenatal services to just 17,610 clients, or about one for every 14 abortions it performed. Only 1,414 clients of Planned Parenthood’s clients were referred for adoptions. Planned Parenthood’s adoption referrals were outnumbered by its abortion patients by a 180 to 1 margin.

According to the online report, PPFA’s 122 affiliates and more than 850 “health centers” saw only 386 infertility patients, or less than one for every two clinics. This made clear once again that Planned Parenthood’s plans don’t typically involve parenthood.

Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer an economic or racial demographic of its abortion patients, but it does say that “Nearly 74 percent of our clients have incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level.”

According to the service report, plannedparenthood.org, the organization’s web site, logged nearly one million visits a month in 2004. Its web site for teens, teenwire.org, ran close behind with about 800,000 visits a month. The teenwire site also received and responded to more than 500 personal inquiries a week (if questions on the web site are representative, dealing with different aspects of abortion, sexuality, etc.).

Both sites tell women how to find and contact Planned Parenthood clinics in their area. In the past, teenwire has told teens in states with parental involvement laws how they can utilize bypass procedures to avoid telling parents about their abortions.

The service report also claims that through the Planned Parenthood web site “more than 2.5 million activists are kept abreast of the latest policies and proposals affecting family planning and have an easy way to contact members of Congress via e-mail, fax, or postal mail.”

The report does not indicate how many abortions Planned Parenthood helped perform overseas. But it does say that through PPFA-International, it “increases access to sexual health services and strengthens support for reproductive rights in nearly two dozen countries throughout the world.”

In addition, the report says that through its programs PPFA-International provided “vital sexual health services and sexuality education” to more than 728,000 people. In the past, Planned Parenthood’s exported “services” have included the performance of abortions and the training of abortionists.

Finances aren’t addressed in the service report However, if one assumes that all 255,015 of Planned Parenthood’s abortions were standard first-trimester suction curettage abortions (knowing that PPFA’s clinics advertise and perform more expensive, later-term abortions), at an average cost of $372, this translates into at least $98.4 million in income from abortion in 2004.

While abortions in the U.S. have been in a steady decline since 1990, Planned Parenthood’s annual abortion totals have increased in 12 out of the 14 years since. This means not only that Planned Parenthood’s share of the abortion market is growing, but that a large part of the organization’s focus and energy is required to preserve abortion’s legality and protect its abortion business interests.

In the service report, Planned Parenthood pawns itself off as “the world’s oldest, largest, and most trusted volunteer, not-for-profit reproductive health care organization.” However, this “trust” largely depends on widespread public confusion on just what Planned Parenthood does or stands for.

This service report shows Planned Parenthood devotes very little of its time or resources to the promotion of parenthood. It shows, on the other hand, that Planned Parenthood devotes an inordinate amount of energy to the promotion and performance of abortion, the killing of innocent unborn children.

That’s not a service record that anyone should be proud of.