Myths of Planned Parenthood

I’m sure most of the country has noticed at least a little bit of the hype surrounding Planned Parenthood (PP). I posted about them a little over a week ago about threats from the federal level towards a state that de-funded their PP.

Why should PP be de-funded? There are two main reasons. PP has cheated on the government multiple times, over-charging it for mislabeled services in order to get more money. As some undercover videos have shown, they also are willing to aid and abet sex traffickers and men taking advantage of underage girls, instead of reporting it like they’re supposed to. It doesn’t make sense for us to fund a company that breaks laws. The second reason is that they perform abortions. They’re the largest abortion provider in the US. PP has created several “reasons” why de-funding them is ludicrous. (I have yet to hear PP addressing the monetary fraud issue.)

Myth #1: “Only 3% of our business is abortions.”

PP has created its own twisted way to count their services that would be viewed as completely ridiculous if another business did it. An excellent article from Live Action gave an example of this. Paraphrasing, there is a company that makes airplanes, but also makes spare parts for airplanes, some of those parts costing as little as $0.25. Selling airplanes is the company’s main business, profit-wise. About 99% of their business is airplanes, and 1% is all the spare parts. This is how the normal business world operates. However, this company sells many more little parts than airplanes. So, PP style, 99% of their business is little spare parts, and 1% is selling airplanes. One spare part = one airplane, which, frankly, is ridiculous. Their business doesn’t revolve around spare parts. It revolves around airplanes.

So in PP, one box of contraceptive pills = one abortion, which is also ridiculous. Looking at it profit-wise from PP’s own report (I’m aware this report is an old one, my apologies, the new one doesn’t include profits, but the percentages are roughly the same), abortion is actually 36% of their business. This is a far cry from 3%.

Myth #2: “None of the taxpayer/government money is used for abortions.”

This argument has never made sense to me. Glenn Beck gave a good example of this strange way of thinking. Again paraphrasing, let’s say there’s a business that does torture. Naturally, nobody likes torture. “Don’t worry!” the business says, “We won’t use your money to fund the actual torture.” Okay, great. Instead your money goes to pay for the lighting, the floors, the cleaning supplies, the exam tables. Now, are you helping fund torture or not? PP will simply use your money instead of their own money to pay for less massive things, and use their own money, which you saved them, to pay for the abortions. It’s all the same thing.

Myth #3: “Women will lose life-saving services if you de-fund us.”

For the most part, this is not true. The money that used to go to PP will instead to go other charitable health clinics…that don’t perform abortions. In Indiana, Governor Daniels said during the time that they de-funded PP, “[I have] commissioned a careful review of access to services across the state and can confirm that all non-abortion services, whether family planning or basic women’s health, will remain readily available in every one of our 92 counties. In addition, I have ordered the Family and Social Services Administration to see that Medicaid recipients receive prompt notice of nearby care options. We will take any actions necessary to ensure that vital medical care is, if anything, more widely available than before.”

Myth #4: “Our goal is to make abortion rare.”

Okay, all the blood-money-hungry suspicions aside, let’s look at this in terms of numbers. Overall, the number of abortions nationally have been declining. This is good, but is it because of PP?

It makes sense that PP’s customers that come for other things would also come to PP for abortions, right? So the number of PP’s customers wanting abortions should be declining, right?

That number is rising.