Report Shows Planned Parenthood Not 'Irreplaceable' or 'Lifesaving'
An influential pro-life organization has released a comprehensive report detailing how the nation's largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, is neither "lifesaving" nor "irreplaceable" in terms of the health services they offer.
The breakdown of the data showing this to be so was released Wednesday by the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the education arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life political action committee that works to get pro-life women elected to Congress.
According to the abortion giant's annual report, Planned Parenthood received $555 million in federal tax dollars in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2016. PP claims to be an "irreplaceable component of our country's healthcare system" that offers "lifesaving care."
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The CLI authors, Vice President and Director of Data Analytics James Studnicki and Institute President Charles A. Donovan, say otherwise.
For most of the services offered at their nearly 650 centers nationwide, Planned Parenthood only provides "a very tiny fraction" of the national annual incidence of those specific health services, the CLI report reads.
"For example, in 2015, Planned Parenthood provided 654,218 HIV tests, one of their highest-volume services. However, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 16% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 64, or about 45 million people, were tested that year for HIV."
When one crunches the numbers, it yields that Planned Parenthood did only 1.4% of HIV tests in the United States that year.
Planned Parenthood has a public image and much messaging that bills itself as "last resort" for people in many communities, a claim Studnicki and Donovan suggest is "deceptive" given the group's high concentration of their contraceptive clients in a handful of mostly liberal states with urban centers.
"The state of California alone provides 35.6% of all Planned Parenthood contraceptive clients, and that the majority (55.7%) of its contraceptive clients nationally come from only five states: California, New York, Texas, Washington, and Pennsylvania," the authors write.
"In fact, Planned Parenthood is most heavily invested in high-population areas which are rich in alternative providers."
The group remains, "by design, the dominant provider of induced abortions in the U.S.; it is their 'raison d'etre,'" they continued.
Between 2011 and 2016, Planned Parenthood increased its service-to-unique-client ratios for contraceptive services by 2.1 percent, testing for sexually transmitted infections by 19 percent, and abortions by 25 percent. During that same five-year period, the group's other services decreased significantly, the data show.
Planned Parenthood's service-to-client ratios for breast exams and pap tests declined by 37 percent. Yet even as their total clientele dropped they have "maintained contraception and STI testing as important support services for their major objective — abortion."
In the fiscal year of Planned Parenthood's report, the group reported performing 328,348 abortions, 3.4 percent of their total services. Yet that 3.4 percent accounts for a significant portion of Planned Parenthood's income, "with estimates ranging from 10 percent of total revenue to as much as one third of its clinic revenue from all sources."
"No service Planned Parenthood provides is irreplaceable," the CLI report concludes.
"Ironically, the elimination of abortion services is the only action Planned Parenthood could take that could be legitimately considered as 'lifesaving.'"
