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NRL News
Defunding
Planned Parenthood With annual revenues approaching a billion dollars and a bottom line that would make most for-profit businesses envious, one would hardly think America’s largest abortion chain would have need of a government handout. Yet federal and state governments have poured hundreds of millions of dollars a year into Planned Parenthood over the past several decades, helping fuel its ever-expanding abortion empire. Some in Congress have had enough and have decided it’s time to shut off the flow of federal family planning funds to groups that perform and promote abortion here in the U.S., just as the government has done to those groups promoting or performing abortion worldwide. An amendment to an appropriations bill sponsored by pro-life Congressman Mike Pence (R-In.) to deny family planning funds to Planned Parenthood garnered 189 votes on July 19, 2007, surprising many of the organization’s defenders. A switch of 22 votes would have led to the amendment’s passage. New bills up for consideration in Congress would prohibit funding to groups like Planned Parenthood that perform abortions. National Right to Life is urging lawmakers to pass S. 351, the “Title X Family Planning Act,” sponsored by Senator David Vitter (R-La.), or H.R. 4133, the “Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act,” sponsored by Rep. Pence, which would put these limits on federal family planning funds. “Taxpayer funds should not be given to organizations that are the backbone of the abortion industry, such as Planned Parenthood,” said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of National Right to Life, adding, “These bills do not call for a reduction in family planning funding, rather they prevent abortion providers from receiving tax dollars.” S. 351 and H.R. 4133 would deny federal family planning funds to non-hospitals that perform abortions, with narrow exceptions. According to its 2005–06 annual report, Planned Parenthood received $305.3 million in “Government Grants and Contracts.” The report also shows that Planned Parenthood performed 264,943 abortions in 2005—nearly 20% of all abortions in the United States. While Planned Parenthood maintains that federal funds do not pay for abortions, this massive infusion of taxpayer cash has helped build the organization into the nation’s largest chain of abortion clinics. In addition, Planned Parenthood is heavily involved in pro-abortion lobbying. According to a recently published detailed, hard-hitting exposé by journalist Charlotte Allen, “Planned Parenthood’s Unseemly Empire” (The Weekly Standard, October 22, 2007, online at www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/223livny.asp), about $120 million of Planned Parenthood’s funds comes from the federal government. Slightly under half of that came from Title X, a federal “family planning” program that is supposed to provide free contraceptives to reproductive-age women from “low income families.” Another big source of Planned Parenthood’s federal funding, to the tune of $61 million, is “Medicaid Waivers,” a program begun in 1993 under the Clinton Administration. In this program, the Department of Health and Human Services can issue states a “waiver” of normal income limits, so that women up to 200% of the federal poverty level can obtain free contraceptives. There are rules in place that are supposed to prohibit federal family planning funds from going directly to support abortion, but this ignores how those funds serve the purpose of promoting the Planned Parenthood brand among abortion-vulnerable women and help keep abortion clinics open across the United States. Federal money helps PPFA buy supplies and cover rent and salaries. Money provided by the government for covered programs means more money can be freed up from fees and private sources to promote Planned Parenthood’s abortion agenda. And, as both Allen and NRL News (June 2007) have pointed out, Planned Parenthood’s investment in abortion is, despite its protestations, considerable. Planned Parenthood says abortion accounts for only 3% of its services. This grossly misleading statement overlooks that, at a minimum, abortion procedures alone make up nearly a third of Planned Parenthood’s clinic income, bringing in at least $98.5 million. This assumes that all abortions are cheaper, standard first-trimester surgical abortions, without anesthesia, which cost around $372, and not the more expensive RU486 chemical abortions or the later-term abortions many Planned Parenthood clinics advertise that cost upwards of $1,000. It also fails to include other services often bundled with abortion, such as pregnancy tests, tests for STDs, or contraceptives sold to the woman after her abortion. One in three women visiting Planned Parenthood had a pregnancy test. Given the fact that Planned Parenthood does at least 21 abortions for every time it delivers prenatal services, it is clear that Planned Parenthood’s plans rarely involved parenthood. Allen also notes in her article that in gratitude for all the government largesse, Planned Parenthood thumbs its nose at the rules and guidelines instituted by society. Despite its image as what Allen terms “the nice abortion provider,” where everything is safe, clean, and professional, Planned Parenthood “has seen its own share of horror stories.” Twenty-one-year-old Edrica Goode of Riverside, California, died on February 14 of toxic shock syndrome after a Planned Parenthood nurse reportedly left cervical dilators inside her. Four women died of rare infections after initiating chemical abortions with RU486 at Planned Parenthood clinics. The clinics were reportedly employing a different protocol from the one recommended by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, allowing abortion patients to take the drug later and to administer the second drug, misoprostol, at home, intravaginally, rather than orally at the doctor’s office. Planned Parenthood dropped the vaginal self-administration of misoprostol after the last two deaths, but apparently continued to refuse to comply with the government-approved protocol. Perhaps most disturbing is a pattern Allen discusses involving Planned Parenthood’s covering up of sexual abuse of minors. Ordinary people would get suspicious if an older man brought a young teen into a clinic for an abortion, but repeatedly Planned Parenthood has looked the other way. Allen mentions the case of Allen Gault, a 41-year-old dog trainer from West Hartford, Connecticut, who took a 15-year-old girl into a local Planned Parenthood for an abortion. Only later, with no help from the clinic, did police find the 15-year-old runaway, locked in a storage place under a staircase, living with the dog trainer and two girlfriends. A DNA test showed the baby aborted was Gault’s, Allen reported. A 13-year-old showed staff at a Cincinnati Planned Parenthood her junior high ID card and paid for her abortion with her soccer coach’s credit card, according to Allen. Spokespeople at Planned Parenthood have insisted that these incidents were flukes, yet Allen says different undercover investigations have repeatedly run into Planned Parenthood counselors suggesting to callers posing as underage teens that they lie about their age or not say anything about the age of their boyfriends. State laws typically require that health care workers report suspected incidents of sexual abuse or statutory rape to authorities. But Planned Parenthood has resolutely fought against attempts by state officials to check its records to see if clinics are complying with the law. Planned Parenthood has also consistently fought against parental involvement laws, claiming that “[a]ccess to confidential abortion services is essential to teenagers’ health.” In recent years, the non-profit “reproductive health care” organization has engaged in intense lobbying and has set up political action committees to advance the Planned Parenthood agenda. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund worked intensely in the last presidential election to defeat pro-life President George W. Bush and credits itself with several successful campaigns to oust pro-life senators and congressmen in the most recent election. Planned Parenthood fought against the partial-birth abortion ban and then helped lead opposition to Bush’s Supreme Court nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito. While the number of abortions has substantially declined in the U.S. in the past decade and a half, Planned Parenthood’s share of the nation’s abortion business has steadily increased. It is America’s largest abortion chain and the nation’s biggest abortion advocate. And it has been able to do so, in part, because of the generous contributions of U.S. taxpayers. Many Americans became incensed when they learned that their tax dollars were going to organizations that perform or promote abortions overseas, prompting President Reagan to institute the so-called “Mexico City Policy” in 1984. Under the “Mexico City Policy,” taxpayer funds are prohibited from funding private foreign family planning organizations that perform or actively promote abortion. A consistent policy should be adopted for domestic family planning programs. “It makes no sense to guard taxpayer funds from being used by abortion-performing and -promoting organizations abroad but at the same time provide millions to the biggest abortion provider in the United States,” said David N. O’Steen, Ph.D., NRLC executive director. |