Planned Parenthood's Annual Numbers Reveal It's Fueling 'Culture of Death': FRC Report
The Family Research Council has released a comprehensive report outlining how the largest abortion provider in the United States is fueling a "culture of death," and exposing its deceptive messaging techniques. The report comes on the heels of YouTube's suppression of a PragerU video Wednesday which articulated similar themes.
The report, "The Real Planned Parenthood: Leading the Culture of Death 2018 Edition," which was published by the Washington-based family advocacy group, distills key information documented in the abortion giant's 2016-2017 annual report.
During fiscal year 2016, Planned Parenthood performed 321,384 abortions, nearly 7,000 fewer than the previous year. When one crunches the numbers it means that approximately 881 babies were aborted every day, approximately one every 98 seconds. The group continues to increase its percentage of all abortions performed in the U.S. rising from 31.5 percent in 20011 to 35 percent in 2014, the report shows, despite a decrease in the number of clinics.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Planned Parenthood's overall services has also dropped in the past five years.
In 2009 the organization reported doing over 1.8 million cancer screenings and related prevention services. In 2016 they did just over 660,000, a 64 percent decline. Nevertheless, Planned Parenthood continues to bill these services as a significant part of their operation.
Likewise, from 2009 to 2016, breast self exams have decreased by over half.
"In 2015, for the first time in Planned Parenthood's history, abortions outnumbered basic breast [self] exams. These numbers do not include mammograms because Planned Parenthood does not provide that service."
The Christian Post reported on Sept. 29, 2015, that during a House Oversight Committee meeting, Cecile Richards testified under oath that Planned Parenthood doesn't provide mammograms, and never has, contradicting her previous claims that it did.
The FRC report also unravels the "The 3 percent Abortion Myth" which pro-life activist Lila Rose, president of Live Action, also spoke about in a PragerU video, which YouTube flagged and restricted as inappropriate for minors to watch earlier this week.
Planned Parenthood likes to say that abortion procedures constitute only 3 percent of their total services in order, to downplay how central abortion is to their mission, the report explains.
But they arrive at that low number by counting every single service they provide — which in one patient visit might include a pap smear, a pregnancy test, dispensing a birth control packet, and administering an STD test. That would count as four services. When tabulated that way they are able to claim they provide almost 9.5 million services annually. When that number is divided by 321,384, the number of abortions performed last year, the result is an approximately 3 percent figure.
Rose explains in her PragerU video that the abortion giant skews these services that get counted so many times, bundling them under the language of "discrete clinical interactions." She noted that even left-leaning news outlets like The Washington Post have called Planned Parenthood's 3 percent claim "very misleading."
National Review's Rich Lowry made the analogy, explaining that "it would be like major league baseball saying they sell 20 million hot dogs, but only play 2,430 games, so baseball is only 0.012 percent of what they do."
