Five Myths About Planned Parenthood
1. Planned Parenthood’s federal funding frees up other money to pay for abortions.
Opponents of Planned Parenthood insist that giving the organization federal dollars allows it to spend other money in its budget to provide abortions. That is not possible — there is no other money.
Title X is a federal grant program that exists solely to help low-income and uninsured people access contraceptives and sexual health care; 5.2 million people use the program annually. But Congress has never appropriated enough money to take care of the estimated 17 million Americans who need publicly funded family-planning care. There always are more patients than subsidies.
2. Ninety percent of what Planned Parenthood does is provide abortions.
That is what Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) said this month in a speech against federal support for Planned Parenthood; his staff later said his assertion was “not intended to be a factual statement.”
Here is a factual statement: Planned Parenthood’s abortion care represents 3 percent of its medical services — 332,000 terminations out of a total of 11.4 million services provided in 2009. Nearly all the care offered at Planned Parenthood health centers is preventive services and screenings, including contraception, testing for sexually transmitted infections, pap smears and breast exams. Title X funds cannot be used for abortion care at any time, for any reason. Federal Medicaid funds can be used to reimburse a provider for an abortion when the pregnancy would endanger the life of the woman or resulted from rape or incest.
3. Defunding Planned Parenthood will reduce abortions.
Contraception prevents the need for abortions, but most politicians who oppose abortion do not support birth control, either. Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), the chief House sponsor of a bill to bar abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood from Title X, has praised a few elements of the program: pregnancy tests, breast cancer screening and HIV testing. He never mentions Title X’s essential work for 41 years — to provide information about and access to birth control, which 99 percent of Americans will use in their lifetime.
Women spend about five years either being pregnant or trying to get pregnant, and about 30 years trying not to get pregnant; the Guttmacher Institute estimates that half of the country’s unintended pregnancies end in abortion. If Pence wants to prevent abortions, he should lead the charge to triple Title X funding.
Instead, Pence has voted to eliminate Title X, and he has no answer for where the 5.2 million people served by that program would get care. Planned Parenthood centers offer contraception to nearly 2.5 million patients a year and serves 36 percent of all Title X patients.
4. Planned Parenthood serves only teenagers and prostitutes.
I’ve never had a chance to talk to Glenn Beck, who implied recently on his Fox radio show that only “hookers” use Planned Parenthood.But when I worked for the organization, I would ask our supporters to picture this: You’re a 22-year-old woman with a job you don’t love, a toddler you’d die for and no health insurance. You live paycheck to paycheck, and you always know to the penny how much cash you’ve got until the end of the month.
Inside the Beltway, it is easy to forget that millions live on that edge. Our typical patient is a working woman between 20 and 24, maybe in school, often with children. But our centers nationwide see women and men of all ages, races, income levels, and marital and social statuses. The number of men seen in Title X-funded centers has tripled in the past 10 years, and the fastest-growing group of women served by Title X is those over 44.
5. People don’t really need Planned Parenthood.
Three million patients each year visit Planned Parenthood’s more than 800 health centers in every state, in big cities and small towns. In some areas, Planned Parenthood and the Title X-funded system are the only sexual health providers for hundreds of miles.
We screen people for high blood pressure, anemia and diabetes; we counsel them about smoking cessation and obesity; we connect them to other primary-care providers and social services. The huge response to the attack on family planning and on Planned Parenthood — hundreds of thousands of Americans signing petitions, showing up at rallies, calling Congress – is extraordinary. But it doesn’t surprise me. One in five American women has gone to Planned Parenthood at some point in her life, for respectful, compassionate, quality care. And now those Americans are going to have our back.
There is no other money? Only a third of Planned Parenthood’s funding comes from government grants. The rest comes from private donors and large foundations. They apparently have a list of 700,000 private donors who provide about 1/4 of their revenue. They also also get big bucks from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Buffett Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Ted Turner Foundation, and others. PP also brings in a certain amount of its own operating revenues. So, what’s this about having no money other than the government grants? Please clarify.
In 1990, when abortions were at their peak of 1.6 million, Planned Parenthood accounted for just about 8% of the total (129,155 abortions). Since that time, abortions in America have dropped by nearly 25% to about 1.2 million, while abortions at Planned Parenthood have doubled.
In other words, in 20 years, the percentage of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood clinics in the U.S. has leaped from 8% to about 27%. If anything is clear, it is that PPFA intends to dominate the abortion “market.”
PPFA constantly tries to underplay its commitment to abortion. Their latest factsheet says that abortion represents 3% of the services Planned Parenthood provides. But this
ignores just how many of PPFA’s other services are sold with every abortion and vastly understates the value of abortion to Planned Parenthood’s bottom line.
Elsewhere, in a separate factsheet released about the same time, the organization admits that 12%, not 3%, of its health care clients receive abortions (PPFA factsheet, “Planned Parenthood by the Numbers,” 1/11). This is a major admission, but even this doesn’t quite
capture what abortion means to Planned Parenthood.
At going rates for standard, surgical first-trimester abortions ($451), Planned Parenthood’s 332,278 abortions represent revenues of at least $149.9 million—at least 37% of the $404.9 million it reported in clinic income for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009. With Planned Parenthood clinics advertising and performing more expensive chemical and later surgical abortions, those revenues are likely much higher.
Does this sound like a group committed to lowering the number of abortions in the U.S.?
@e
You are simply full of it, or who ever this cut and paste is from is full of it.
They are not trying to downplay that they provide abortion. They are trying to kill the notion that federal money is providing for abortions. Why? Because federal funding doesn’t pay for abortions. I am so sick of the weasel word game.
What moron wants to get rid of contraception to stop abortion?
Stick to a subject you know more about. Do a little research.
Here is a fact that perhaps you can wrap your head around: If there are fewer uniuntended pregnancies, there will be fewer abortions.
@Wolverine, leave a link so I can try to figure out what you mean.
There is no money in their budget for abortions. The patients pay for their abortions at Planned Parenthood like they would at any other abortion provider clinic. There are no freebies or reduced cost abortions.
This isn’t really about govt. money/tax payer dollars and it never has been.
It is about ending planned parenthood.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1766116/posts
If you can’t get private funds because of boycotts and you can’t get Title X funds, then you can’t provide services to poor women.
Forget the abortion services. These are 2 separate issues.
Here’s another. This group opposes contraception.
http://womenofgrace.com/breaking_news/?p=5444
Check out some of the retailers on the last post. Remember, this is really about birth control.
Planned Parenthood Federation 2006-2007 Annual Report, Page 14 Summary of Financial Activities: $258.7 million from private donations and bequests.
“Art of Giving” in Business Week October 25, 1999: “Of the $17.6 million that the Buffett Foundation donated in the fiscal year ended June 30, nearly $3.8 million went to Planned Parenthood. This rated the foundation among the federation’s top three contributors. But what truly sets the Buffett Foundation apart is that it involves itself directly at the clinic level by making project grants to local affiliates across the country — 17 of them in this year alone. Over the years, Buffett money has enabled dozens of Planned Parenthood clinics to add abortions to their panoply of services.”
There are other articles about Ted Turner money going to NARRL and PP to help in the political fight against the anti-abortionists, especially during the Bush-Gore campaign. Also got a lead to an article in The Daily Jewish Forward of 12 November 2004 describing how wealthy bizman Lewis B. Cullen was spreading over $100 million around his favorite charities. His three principal donees: New York Public Library; Human Rights Watch; and Planned Parenthood. One could also ask how the PP channels all those smaller private donations, women’s health or abortion or both.
Seems to me to pretty hard to boycott the likes of the Buffett Foundation and Lewis B. Cullen. Moreover, if you fear being boycotted, all you have to do is send your money through that charitable exchange which has been set up purposely to put a third party between the donor and the donee and hide the identity of the donor from public scrutiny.
As far as I am concerned, the principal argument IS about the abortion side of it. The women’s health side I support. If PP was not so heavy into the abortion side of it (330,000+ abortions per year is not peanuts), I suspect there wouldn’t be much of a dispute here at all.
As for that fictional 22-year-old with the toddler, a job she doesn’t like, no health insurance, and a car about to die, I have no problem with helping her with her health needs. But, if she is facing all those problems and then turns around and engages in the kind of risky behaviour that gets her pregnant and on the path to the PP abortion clinic, then my sympathy — not so much. There may be a lot of things you just cannot mitigate on your own in life, but there are those times when your own behavior choices do have a direct positive or negative effect on your own welfare.
I still am not seeing this exchange with the money.
Good for Buffett. Abortion is a legal service in this country. However, Buffett money didn’t pay for abortions. Patients pay for abortions.
There is an all out effort to make those of us who support abortion as a legal procedure out to be dirty or immoral. I actually think it is funny. I don’t feel the least bit dirty or immoral. I grew up in an era when I know what happens to people when abortion isn’t legal. It isn’t pretty.
I would far rather PP provide abortions than some of the less scrupulous, for profit clinics I know about. It really is all about women’s safety. And no, I still don’t feel dirty and immoral. Actually, those who try to strip away the means for women (and men) to control their own reproductions are the ones who should feel dirty and immortal. I don’t think 30-year old women with 10 children because they are told God is going to burn them alive for using contraception is moral. IN fact, I believe it is immoral.
Anything I can do to empower people not to have unwanted pregnancy, I will do. that is why the entire planned parenthood debate is …well..frankly, immoral.
I am just so disgusted with this debate. On one hand conservatives bitch and moan that it is not the federal governments job to provide healthcare but on the other hand they say it IS the federal governemnts job to FORCE women to have children they neither want nor probably can afford. You want to force women to have children? Then keep your mouth shut when it comes to welfare and helping poor women and children with your tax dollars. Oh wait, I think that’s one of the programs the republicans reduced funding for. Some nerve, some nerve.
And once again, Title X money is for family planning, don’t want the government involved in family planning, then do away with title X cause no body reaches more women than Planned Parent when it comes to affordable family planning access.
I am just so disgusted with this debate. On one hand conservatives bitch and moan that it is not the federal governments job to provide healthcare but on the other hand they say it IS the federal governemnts job to FORCE women to have children they neither want nor probably can afford. You want to force women to have children? Then keep your mouth shut when it comes to welfare and helping poor women and children with your tax dollars. Oh wait, I think that’s one of the programs the republicans reduced funding for. Some nerve, some nerve.
And once again, Title X money is for family planning, don’t want the government involved in family planning, then do away with title X cause no body reaches more women than Planned Parent when it comes to affordable family planning access.
Oh, and e, allow to elighten you why Planned Parenthood is probably performing more abortions. Look what is happening in the state of virginia, most clinics will be forced to close down. I imagine Planned Parenthood picks up the pieces for those clinics that are forced to shut down for a myriad of reasons, like, oh, maybe their provider gets murdered or gets so many threats to their life they choose to stop practicing.
Wolverine,
When was the last time you were without comprehenisive healthcare?
What’s the point of the question? I’ve already told you I personally have no problem with helping the poor among us with health care access and costs. Grants or direct — but with a proviso that the system be made fail safe from future fiscal collapse. It’s the moral aspect of abortion on demand and the risky behavior which leads to it, including the enabling of it by others, which bothers me a great deal. So, let me throw a reverse question. Do you just want to go on spending until the system itself is no longer viable? Do you not see a need to revise the system in order to allow it to survive for future generations?
One of the strangest things about this Planned Parenthood debate is that Margaret Sanger herself, the founder of the PP movement, was opposed to abortion —called it the wrongful taking of a human life. Read her autobiography.
Well. Moon, if you believe that killing a living entity in the womb is just another acceptable part and parcel of the ability to control one’s own reproduction and that my own views on the morality of it are, therefore, “immoral,” there isn’t much left to discuss here. The funny part in all this is that we agree on the preventive part. We even agree on helping with the costs of such for those who genuinely need it. I think where we part company is on the issue of these same people accepting some personal responsibility for their own actions and not having such an easy out by making an innocent being pay the cost of their own inability to govern themselves. Unfortunately, the debate tactic here seems to be to try to swing the whole thing away from the abortion issue and attempt to accuse the opposition of not supporting the premise of helping with women’s health issues per se — which is a very large generalization.
Wolverine,
The discussion IS about family planning as the funds being debated are Title X, which by the way, Mike Pence proposed, cutting the Title X funding in its entirety.
I did not call you immoral and you know it.
You are right about steering the conversation away from abortion because it is about funding Title X, not funding abortion.
However, I don’t shy away from saying that I am pro-choice because of pressure from religious groups. That is what I was trying to say. To be opposed to prevention and opposed to abortion is totally unrealistic about human behavior.
People should take repsonsibility for their own reproduction. Not everyone has the means and that is why funding family planning is so important.
People mistakenly think that if PP is defunded they will stop providing abortions to get the funding back. That is my wager.
I don’t expect that to happen. I expect the foundations will be hit up harder for prevention money and poor women will just have to pay more. I also expect if PP is defunded that we will see the abortion soar.
Is that what we want? Didn’t think so.
@Wolverine, I have never said what I believe as far as my personal beliefs on abortion. I believe that is a private matter and would very much depend on circumstances.
I have been very public on what I believe policy should be. Unlike many, I don’t believe my personal beliefs should set policy, regardless of topic.
Well, Moon, if we could suppose that Planned Parenthood was devoted entirely to women’s health care as advertised and was not a major player in the abortion issue, I doubt seriously that the PP would have been targeted in particular by Pence or anyone else in those budget debates. It is likely that PP, along with many other recipients of government grants, would be asked to take a cut in the greater interest of pulling this country out of a fiscal mess but not targeted for what they do for women’s health care. Don’t let some fringe group opposing contraception lead you to the conclusion that there may be some tidal wave of “anti-” about to swoop down. Surrounded as I am by some very devout Catholics, I do not see even the Catholic Church pinging on non-Catholics about it. To be quite candid, the Catholic Church has a great deal of difficulty even persuading many of its own on the subject.
@Wolverine, I totally agree about ‘many of its own.’ Some even leave the church like Mr. Howler did over that, divorce etc.
However, back to PP. It really isn’t about money. If it were really about money most people would see that preventing pregnancy is a lot less expensive in the long run, on just about all levels. What Mr. Pence and others need to realize is that abortion is a legal procedure in this country. He doesn’t have to like it. I respect his right to dislike it. I do not respect his war on PP.
If we are a nation of laws, then he can lower his sites off of PP, This entire argument has really gone to the dogs. Let’s pretend for a minute that I am against the death penalty. Does that mean I want all prisons disassembled because some inmates are on death row?
There are all sorts of things that are legal that people strongly oppose. That’s why we turn to rule of law. We all won’t agree. I know what’s about to swoop down and I sure don’t like it.
All of our politicians should be magicians – they are simply diverting all the attention away from the real issues by cutting off funding for PP, and bringing in abortion. Instead of debating and cutting the billions that are needed, they rile up the entire infrastructure of both sides to fight over 80 Million in funding, and bring in all the abortion activists. Just another maneuver to divert the attention away from the real issues.
Boom. Pat nails it. Same thing with NPR funding, they knew that it would be DOA in the Senate but wasted everyone’s time with theatrics. We have grown men arguing over 61 billion against a 1.4 trillion deficit. Glad I’m moving to Hong Kong next year….
@Pat, it could be diversionary or it could be that some of them are just stupid and think the way to reduce abortion is by cutting out access to contraception.
There are a few politicians out there like Side-show Bob who is opposed to the use of contraception.
@Cato, why are you moving to Hong Kong? Are you serious?
@Moon-howler
Absolutely serious. I just bought a little flat near the rail lines with a great view of Junk Bay (it’s prettier than it sounds). I think Southeast Asia is about to undergo an multi-decade renaissance and there’s no better place to play it from than Hong Kong. Or Singapore, but Singapore is a bit too uptight for me.
Doesn’t the Singapore govt. cane people who break laws?
I would opt for Hong Kong also. Do you speak Cantonese?
Cato, I think you’re absolutely right about Southeast Asia being the place to be. The US is stymied by fights over idiotic social issues that rob the country of its energy and entreprenurial spirit.
Why do we keep plowing the same old ground? If you put this up a hundred times you will get the same answers. Isn’t that something like the definition of insanity–doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
I will post it once a day for the rest of this blog’s life if it educates just one person. I have heard too many lies about Planned Parenthood.
I am tired of the idiot talk about getting rid of Planned Parenthood and that will get rid of abortions. Abortions are caused by pregnancy.
That’s basically it Censored, but it’s not just social issues, it’s literally everything from taxation to welfare state expansion to debt problems and anything else you can think of. I’m not optimistic that current or any future elected leadership will have the sand to address any serious problem. Basically my wife and I have our best years ahead of us and made the decision that we don’t want to spend them in the environment that appears to be materializing.
I speak enough Mandarin to get around, which will be handy on trips to the mainland but it’s not so much of a problem since most everyone in HK speaks English and the expat community is quite vibrant.
abortions are not caused by pregnancy, abortions are caused by providers of abortion
How many non-pregnant people do you know getting an abortion?
that’s silly, that’s like saying carrots kill, how many people do you know who eat carrots end up not dying one day?
@e
How many people do you know who get abortions who aren’t pregnant?
Cut out unwanted or unintended pregnancies and you cut out 90% of the abortions.
Elihu, I need to get your fathers hebrew name your grandfather, pappa eli’s hebrew name, and your grandmother, natalie’s hebrew name right away so we can have them painted on my youngest son, Joshua’s tallit before his bar mitzvah which is coming up very soon. Could you call your mom and ask her to email you the EXACT hebrew spelling of each of the names with the corresponding english names so I keep them straight? then you can forward me her email. Also, include her # Thankyou!!!! my email is [email protected]. I don’t respond here or read the posts . I was just looking for you speciifically, so you can email me if you have questions. Thankyou. ( asap!!!) Heidi
Elihu, I need to get your fathers hebrew name your grandfather, pappa eli’s hebrew name, and your grandmother, natalie’s hebrew name right away so we can have them painted on my youngest son, Joshua’s tallit before his bar mitzvah which is coming up very soon. Could you call your mom and ask her to email you the EXACT hebrew spelling of each of the names with the corresponding english names so I keep them straight? then you can forward me her email. Also, include her # Thankyou!!!! my email is [email protected]. I don’t respond here or read the posts . I was just looking for you speciifically, so you can email me if you have questions. Thankyou. ( asap!!!) Heidi
Elihu, I need to get your fathers hebrew name your grandfather, pappa eli’s hebrew name, and your grandmother, natalie’s hebrew name right away so we can have them painted on my youngest son, Joshua’s tallit before his bar mitzvah which is coming up very soon. Could you call your mom and ask her to email you the EXACT hebrew spelling of each of the names with the corresponding english names so I keep them straight? then you can forward me her email. Also, include her # Thankyou!!!! my email is [email protected]. I don’t respond here or read the posts . I was just looking for you speciifically, so you can email me if you have questions. Thankyou. ( asap!!!) Heidi
Elihu, I need to get your fathers hebrew name your grandfather, pappa eli’s hebrew name, and your grandmother, natalie’s hebrew name right away so we can have them painted on my youngest son, Joshua’s tallit before his bar mitzvah which is coming up very soon. Could you call your mom and ask her to email you the EXACT hebrew spelling of each of the names with the corresponding english names so I keep them straight? then you can forward me her email. Also, include her # Thankyou!!!! my email is [email protected]. I don’t respond here or read the posts . I was just looking for you speciifically, so you can email me if you have questions. Thankyou. ( asap!!!) Heidi
and please email me right away to let me know you got my post please!
nice to hear from you heidi, i’ll send you email tomorrow. although i suspect your mom would probably have better info in this matter than mine, but i’ll call my mom tonight and see what she can tell me
Elihu,
I already asked my mother: She claimed both our grandparents had NO hebrew names, which I know is not true. Thankyou for calling. Just make sure you email me the correct hebrew spelling with the corresponding names so I don’t confuse them. [email protected]. I will wait to send the email with the other names to Shlomit in Israel. I only have a week in order to get them painted on and sent to us in CA. Thankyou!!!!!
Elihu,
I forgot: make sure you give me Henri’s hebrew name too. I would like to put him on the tallit as a memorial.
hcr was chaim tzi חיים צבי
his dad was eli[yahu] אליהו
נעכא is necha (natalie)
hcr was chaim tzvi, my bad. hebrew still the same חיים צבי