What is Planned Parenthood Doing with your Tax Dollars?
Each year, Planned Parenthood releases its annual report, which details the inner workings of America’s largest abortion business and leading public school sex education promotor. To help you sort through this information, we reviewed the hundreds of pages comprising more than 20 years of annual reports, and here’s what we found:
The data shows that Planned Parenthood is a failing business and that the federal government – using your tax dollars – is footing the bill. It is only through the use of propaganda and friendly media spin that Planned Parenthood has maintained its position and funding as a “reproductive health care provider.”
Here is the latest information on Planned Parenthood and how it is (mis)using your tax dollars:
How many abortions has Planned Parenthood performed?
In 2016, the year of the latest report, Planned Parenthood performed 321,384 abortions, a small decrease from 328,348 in 2015. That’s roughly 38% of the abortions sold in the United States. Abortions comprise 13 to 14 percent of all Planned Parenthood’s client visits in a given year, although since 1993 the organization repeatedly claims abortion only represents 3 percent of all its procedures
Though the overall number of abortions decreased in the U.S. from 1995-2014, the percentage of abortions Planned Parenthood sells continues to increase. The number of abortions sold by the organization has grown by 11 percent since 2006 and 139 percent since 1993. Its own numbers demonstrate that Planned Parenthood is in the abortion-selling business.
What is Planned Parenthood’s most common procedure?
In 2016, Planned Parenthood completed 3,677,503 tests for sexually transmitted diseases (STD), including chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis, and completed 706,903 tests for HIV. Currently, STD testing and treatment accounts for almost 50 percent of all procedures provided at Planned Parenthood clinics. There has been a 36 percent increase in general STD testing and a 125 percent increase in HIV tests given since 2006, despite a general decrease in new HIV diagnoses.
Why is this important?
In its annual report, Planned Parenthood claims that it is the “largest provider of sex education” in the nation. It’s interesting to note that youth ages 15-24 currently account for one-half of the 20 million new sexually transmitted infections recorded by the Centers for Disease Control – despite being only a quarter of the sexually active population. If Planned Parenthood considers itself responsible for providing “medically accurate” sex education information to our youth, it should answer questions about why the STD rate continues to increase under its leadership.
How does Planned Parenthood use your money?
Since Cecile Richards became Planned Parenthood’s president in 2006, there has been a noticeable decline in the provision of more basic services like cancer screenings and prenatal services, but an ever increasing revenue stream into the organization. Richards’ frequently references these basic services, especially cancer screenings like pap smears and breast exams when she defends Planned Parenthood and its federal funding. (Note: Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms.)
Under Richards’ leadership:
- Revenue has increased by more than 43 percent
- Government funding is up by more than 60 percent (thanks in part to new funding from the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.”)
- The number of clinics has decreased by 30 percent
- The number of clients is down by 23 percent
- The number of visits has dipped by 20 percent and services by 10 percent
Based on its own reports, Planned Parenthood is failing as a business that provides medical services. Though there was a brief increase in clients seeking its services in the first year the Affordable Care Act became law, the procedure numbers decreased in almost every category the following year. By 2016, the overall number of clients decreased 20 percent, indicating that the services Planned Parenthood offered were not as critical as Richards and others claim.
What does all this mean?
The government must defund Planned Parenthood. Not only does this organization perform abortions on demand, but it also encourages millions of young people to indulge in sexual experimentation and then makes money off their inevitable mistakes through STD testing and treatment, and abortion. Through all this, Planned Parenthood continues to take in more than five hundred million dollars a year of our tax dollars while simultaneously seeing fewer clients and failing in its stated missionto provide reproductive and basic health care.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brittany Raymer serves as a policy analyst at Focus on the Family, researching and writing about abortion, assisted suicide, bioethics and a variety of other issues involving the sanctity of human life and broader social issues. She regularly contributes articles to The Daily Citizen and has written op-eds published in The Christian Post and The Washington Examiner. Previously, Raymer worked at Samaritan’s Purse in several roles involving research, social media and web content management. While there, she also contributed research for congressional testimonies and assisted with the Ebola crisis response. Raymer earned a bachelor of arts in history at Seattle Pacific University and completed a master’s degree in history at Liberty University in Virginia. She lives in Colorado Springs with her beloved Yorkie-Poo, Pippa.
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