Planned Parenthood reports killing 332,757 babies last year, most since 2011
Abortion procedures performed at Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide increased to 332,757 last year, as the company's new president, Dr. Leana Wen, called abortion a “human right.”
The figure highlighted in the business' latest annual report shows an increase of 11,373 abortions over the previous year’s report.
Planned Parenthood's report shows that it received $564.8 million in federal grants and reimbursements in 2017-'18 and received $100 million more in private donations in 2018 than it did in 2017; and has net assets of nearly $1.9 billion.
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The business' adoption referrals also "decreased by 1,000 last year to around 2,800 "which means that Planned Parenthood clinics performed 118 abortions for every one adoption referral," The National Review noted.
Wen, who's the first physician to lead the company in its 50-year history, described abortion as being part of standard medical care and a “fundamental human right” in her message accompanying the annual report.
“Through all our work, we will continue to assert what we know to be true: Planned Parenthood services — from birth control to cancer screenings [Planned Parenthood does not offer mammograms] to abortion — are standard medical care. Reproductive health care is health care. Women’s health care is health care. And health care is a fundamental human right,” Wen wrote in part.
The report showed abortion services provided by Planned Parenthood accounted for 3.4 percent of the medical services at the clinics, a 0.4 percent increase over the previous year.
In a previous interview with The Christian Post, Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director, explained how the company bills its services to claim that abortions only account for 3 to 10 percent of what they do.
"All of it boils down to how they bill for services," Johnson said. "For example: an annual exam, Pap smear, gonorrhea and chlamydia tests, and seven packs of birth control account for one visit and are billed as 10 services. They unbundle for abortion, and count all services provided as one. We don't really know what the true numbers are because of the bundling and unbundling."
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C. noted in a report published in 2015: "The calculation counts each 'discrete clinical interaction' as a separate 'medical service,' meaning simple tests or routine provision of birth control are given the same weight as surgical or chemical abortions. For example, if a woman in the course of a year receives a free condom, a pregnancy test, a sexually transmitted infection test, and an abortion, Planned Parenthood would say abortion was only 25 percent of the services provided."
Wen, who emigrated from China with her parents as child, said her parents depended of food stamps and Medicaid and Planned Parenthood for health care.
“When I was 8, my parents brought me here from China. We came to the U.S. with $40 to our name. We depended on Medicaid and food stamps and also on Planned Parenthood for health care,” she said last fall.
Lila Rose, president and founder of national pro-life organization Live Action, dismissed the notion that Planned Parenthood is a health care organization. "Planned Parenthood is not a health care organization — the corporation is America’s largest abortion chain, and its own numbers prove it,” Rose said in a statement.
“Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen admitted this month that Planned Parenthood’s ‘core mission is providing, protecting and expanding access to abortion,’ and it recently published a plan to expand its abortions in 2019. Poll after poll shows a majority of American taxpayers are opposed to funding abortions. When taxpayers subsidize nearly 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s budget and the abortion chain readily admits its core mission is abortion, taxpayer money is supporting abortions, period,” she added.
Last year, the abortion rights group Center for Reproductive Rights argued in a report that if Roe was overturned, then 22 states would likely ban abortion in response.
In a recent interview with Bustle, Wen addressed pro-choice advocates' concerns, saying, "Especially now with the Supreme Court, we’re dangerously close to a world that looks much like the one before Roe was decided in 1973," Wen said. "We are, though, optimistic because we know what the American people want."
But Pro-Life Action League Executive Director Eric J. Scheidler, told CP last July that claims like 22 states immediately banning abortion are exaggerated "fear mongering."
"At most, only a couple of states with extremely conservative legislatures might even attempt something like a total ban on abortion," Scheidler told CP. "[It's] far more likely that states would seek to further restrict abortion, in line with the view of most Americans, with measures like banning late-term abortion and holding abortion facilities to the highest health and safety standards," he said.
He added that the Supreme Court could uphold greater restrictions on abortion than we've seen so far, such as the bans on abortion after 20 weeks that have been passed in some states.
