Since Leana Wen became president of Planned Parenthood earlier this year, she has been careful to avoid the a-word: abortion. In fact, the abortion giant has noticeably shifted its strategy away from speaking openly about abortion in favor of talking about “healthcare.”
In a recent interview, Wen argued that healthcare is a “human right,” and a graphic on Planned Parenthood’s website reads, “This is healthcare.”
If healthcare is that important to the leadership of Planned Parenthood, they should actually try offering it to their clients. As the evidence shows conclusively, Planned Parenthood isn’t in the healthcare business: they are in the abortion business.
Recent news from Idaho shows that Planned Parenthood’s forays into actual healthcare have failed dramatically.
Idaho residents received letters from Planned Parenthood notifying them that a pilot program that offered primary care services would be ending. Begun in 2016, the program offered healthcare services a doctor’s office would normally provide, such as treating common colds, the flu and high blood pressure.
Kara Cadwallader, Vice President of Medical Affairs and Senior Medical Director for Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands (PPGNHI), claimed the program was “successful.” But PPGNHI’s annual reports indicate the program was anything but.
Their 2016 report shows that primary care made up a paltry 0.05 percent of visits, while visits for abortion were more than 16 percent. In the 2017 report, the primary care category was eliminated entirely. Cadwallader even admits that the number of patients coming though Planned Parenthood’s doors decreased because they had access to those medical services elsewhere.
Not only was the program a failure, but the report also highlights how Planned Parenthood routinely hides the real impact of the abortion services they offer.
PPGNHI’s 2017 report notes that abortions made up nine percent of visits, but “follow-up visits and after care” for abortion services were moved into other service categories. This shell game – putting abortion-related appointments under different categories – is how Planned Parenthood tries to maintain their lie-of-the-century claim that abortion is only three percent of what they do. The reality is 95 percent of pregnant women who enter Planned Parenthood’s doors have an abortion.
Pulling back and looking at the sum total of the evidence, it is beyond doubt that Planned Parenthood fills its coffers by killing the unborn.
A report by the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) last year found that the services Planned Parenthood offers are neither irreplaceable nor lifesaving. Abortion is 35 percent of the market share of services they provide while HIV tests are just 1.4 percent and pap tests are less than 1 percent. From 2011 to 2016, the service-to-unique-client ratio for abortion rose 25 percent – the biggest increase of any service they offer – while breast exams fell 37 percent over the same time period.
A study by CLI Vice President Dr. James Studnicki and Dr. John Fisher from earlier this year found that as the number of induced abortions fell in the U.S. over the last 20 years, the number of abortions Planned Parenthood performed has dramatically increased. In fact, Planned Parenthood performed 3 million more abortions than the national abortion trend.
Reviewing the data from the last five years of Planned Parenthood’s annual reports show a 60 percent drop in prenatal care and a 20 percent decline in unique patients. But, as usual, their abortion business was booming. Planned Parenthood performed approximately 126 abortions (1,628,550) for every one adoption referral (12,879) over the last five years.
Planned Parenthood continually battles the perception that abortion is all they do because, as the facts show, abortion is truly all they do. It’s so central to their mission that when Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner reportedly offered past Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richard a deal to increase federal funding in exchange for ending abortion completely, she turned down the offer.
Thankfully, there are options available that provide actual healthcare services. There are at least 20 community health centers for every one Planned Parenthood facility that offer comprehensive healthcare services without doing abortions. Please check out our information on the over 2,700 pregnancy centers in the United States that provide life-affirming healthcare services.
For babies and moms,
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