Throughout the congressional debate over whether taxpayer dollars should continue to be used to fund Planned Parenthood, proponents claimed that not doing so would deny women across the country access to quality health care. However, according to the abortion giant’s own recently released 2014-15 annual report covering its activities, it provided fewer health care services to fewer patients than the year before, while still continuing to abort more than 300,000 babies annually. Despite the reduction in services provided by the organization, the report reveals that federal funding to Planned Parenthood increased.
Life News reports:
The 2,500,000 patients Planned Parenthood saw in 2014 is the lowest annual number reported by Planned Parenthood since 1998. A quick look at the numbers contained in its report shows that the number of “services” PP provided to its customers fell from 10,590,333 in 2013 to 9,455,582 in 2014. This represents an 11 percent drop in services provided by Planned Parenthood.
At the same time, Planned Parenthood performed a total of 323,999 abortions in 2014, as shown in the report. That figure reveals that Planned Parenthood continues to be the largest abortion business in the nation.
Meanwhile, though Planned Parenthood saw fewer patients and performed fewer services, government funding to the organization rose by 4.8 percent, from $528 million to $533 million.
Jim Sedlak, vice president of American Life League, points to the latest data as further evidence that federal funding for Planned Parenthood must be terminated.
“It is absolutely incredible that Planned Parenthood continues to get more and more taxpayer dollars while its customer base and services provided plummets,” he said. “An 11 percent decrease in services and a record low number of clients are very significant, yet Congress recently passed a budget for 2016 keeping Planned Parenthood fully funded. It is time this stopped.”
Congressional Republicans had been fighting to cut funding to Planned Parenthood following the release of undercover videos by the Center for Medical Progress that galvanized opposition to the organization.
CMP’s released tapes included secretly recorded comments from executives of Planned Parenthood and StemExpress, undercover footage from clinics — including footage of fetal tissue being handled by workers, footage of fetal tissue from aborted pregnancies, and on-camera interviews with Holly O’Donnell, a former StemExpress procurement technician. The damning videos featured Planned Parenthood officials admitting to altering abortion procedures to procure fetal tissue, as well as selling fetal tissue for profit. Another video revealed that StemExpress did not always obtain consent from mothers to use their fetal tissue, a practice that Fox News notes would be “a serious ethical breach.”
In addition to the legal questions the videos raised, many critics criticized the barbarity of the fetal organ harvesting industry that the video footage captured. In a video released on August 19, for example, O’Donnell recalls encountering “fetuses” that still had beating hearts. The former technician went on to describe how her supervisor so callously referred to the beating heart of a gestated fetus as “cool.”
But earlier this month, the Republican rally against Planned Parenthood lost steam and both houses of Congress easily passed an omnibus spending bill that fully funds the abortion provider. Of the $1.1 trillion package, $286 million is set aside for Title X family planning spending, much of which goes to Planned Parenthood.
And despite the glaring revelations captured in the videos, Planned Parenthood advocates such as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Republicans of waging a “war on women’s health” in an effort to make it harder “for millions of women to access the lifesaving health care they need.”
Despite the rhetoric, however, Planned Parenthood’s claims of offering important health services have repeatedly been called into question.
In 2011, for example, the pro-life group Live Action uncovered evidence that refuted Planned Parenthood’s claims that it provides vital health services such as breast exams and mammograms to women — claims that Planned Parenthood puts forth each time lawmakers consider pulling its federal funding. The group released recordings of various phone calls made to 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 cities in which Planned Parenthood workers informed the callers that those services were not available. Live Action’s website elaborated on the content and purpose of the recordings:
Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells [the Live Action caller] she will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admit that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure. “We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” admits a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona. Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, KS explains to the caller, “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics.”
Live Action’s YouTube video was released just one month after the same group exposed Planned Parenthood for its involvement in sex trafficking. The video begins, “In light of recent scandal and proposed federal budget cuts, Planned Parenthood has launched a multi-million dollar public relations campaign.” It then cuts to recordings of the various phone calls made to Planned Parenthood clinics that reflect a failure to provide vital healthcare services such as mammograms.
Likewise, former Planned Parenthood Director Abby Johnson, who is now a leading pro-life activist, declared that the recordings demonstrate that Planned Parenthood is not the comprehensive healthcare provider it purports to be:
For so long, PP has touted that they are a provider of mammogram services. This is just one of the lies that PP uses to draw people into their clinics. PP is not able to provide quality services on their own, so they are forced to lie to the public about services they don’t provide — and mammograms are just one of those services.
Pointing to the evidence captured in those recordings, Live Action President Lila Rose noted,
Planned Parenthood is first and foremost an abortion business, but Planned Parenthood and its allies will say almost anything to try to cover up that fact and preserve its taxpayer funding. It’s not surprising that an organization found concealing statutory rape and helping child sex traffickers would misrepresent its own services so brazenly, playing on women’s fears in order to protect their tax dollars.
Four years later, nothing has changed. Planned Parenthood continues to be the largest abortion business in the country, and still enjoys the benefits of taxpayer funding, while simultaneously fending off yet another scandal.
Photo: AP Images
