“Practically every defender of the organization, fighting to preserve its federal funding, reverts to the 3 percent figure. How could you possibly, they ask, defund a group that devotes itself overwhelmingly to uncontroversial procedures and services for women?
“The 3 percent figure is an artifice and a dodge, but even taking it on its own terms, it’s not much of a defense. Only Planned Parenthood would think saying that they only kill babies 3 percent of the time is something to brag about. How much credit would we give someone for saying he only drives drunk 3 percent of the time, or only cheats on business trips 3 percent of the time, or only hits his wife during 3 percent of domestic disputes?
[….]
“The 3 percent figure is derived by counting abortion as just another service like much less consequential services. So abortion is considered a service no different than a pregnancy test (1.1 million), even though a box with two pregnancy tests can be procured from the local drugstore for less than $10.”
Here’s the important math analogy:
“By Planned Parenthood’s math, a woman who gets an abortion but also a pregnancy test, an STD test, and some contraceptives has received four services, and only 25 percent of them are abortion [related]. This is a little like performing an abortion and giving a woman an aspirin, and saying only half of what you do is abortion.”…
See video of exchange between Rep. Cynthia Lummins (R, WY) and the president of Planned Parenthood, Cecile Richards, here.
The 3 percent figure that Planned Parenthood uses is misleading, comparing abortion services to every other service that it provides. The organization treats each service — pregnancy test, STD test, abortion, birth control — equally. Yet there are obvious difference between a surgical (or even medical) abortion, and offering a urine (or even blood) pregnancy test. These services are not all comparable in how much they cost or how extensive the service or procedure is.
[….]
While Planned Parenthood has no legal obligation to make its data more public, it is unfortunate that the public has limited access to data about the organization. Planned Parenthood could end the speculation–and Pinocchios–by providing a more transparent breakdown of its clients, referrals and sources of revenues.
Again, the WASHINGTON POST gives the 3% position three Pinocchios. Here is a website commenting on this:
Earlier this week, I read a terrific post with this spot-on headline, “There’s no cover for Planned Parenthood anymore.” The reference was to the deeply disturbing truths unveiled by a series of six undercover videos filmed by the Center for Medical Progress, which has caused “cracks” in the “edifice.”
But it could have included a myriad of other examples of how Planned Parenthood is in deep, deep trouble. On Monday, for example, NRL News Today wrote about the hit PPFA’s public image has taken. All of a sudden PPFA doesn’t seem so invincible.
The nub of the problem is that Planned Parenthood has a convoluted way of making it seem that its abortion “services” represent only a miniscule percentage of the “health services” it provides–the aforementioned 3%. That and its unwillingness to provide a detailed breakdown of its “clients, referrals and sources of revenues.”
Lee goes through a series of steps to reach this conclusion (which Dr. O’Bannon has documented in even greater detail):
The 3 percent figure that Planned Parenthood uses is misleading, comparing abortion services to every other service that it provides. The organization treats each service — pregnancy test, STD test, abortion, birth control — equally. Yet there are obvious difference between a surgical (or even medical) abortion, and offering a urine (or even blood) pregnancy test. These services are not all comparable in how much they cost or how extensive the service or procedure is….
This next portion comes from a debate I am having [had] on FaceBook, in which I pointed out the very false idea that PPH offers only 3% abortive procedures to women out of their entire health services. Planned Parent “Hood” would like you to believe this three-percent stat… but in reality they are using smoke-and-mirrors:
Underneath this veil of media and show-business gossamer is an organization that, contrary to the impression it works hard to create, focuses obsessively on abortion, providing ever more abortions every year, reaching out to an ever-younger clientele. The 3 percent pie slice in the 2005-06 financial report, representing 264,943 abortion customers served, can only be described as deliberately misleading.
One way Planned Parenthood massages the numbers to make its abortion business look trivial is to unbundle its services for purposes of counting. Those 10.1 million different medical procedures in the last fiscal year, for instance, were administered to only 3 million clients. An abortion is invariably preceded by a pregnancy test–a separate service in Planned Parenthood’s reckoning–and is almost always followed at the organization’s clinics by a “going home” packet of contraceptives, which counts as another separate service. Throw in a pelvic exam and a lab test for STDs–you get the picture. In terms of absolute numbers of clients, one in three visited Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test, and of those, a little under one in three had a Planned Parenthood abortion.
Here is a graphic showing that CVS almost does all the “health-care” Planned Parenthood does (click to enlarge):
For those reasons, I think this graphic, taken from Planned Parenthood’s data, better illustrates Planned Parenthood’s activities:
This is how PPHF “cooks the book” if you will (like Enron) in order to look more legit. Take note that a third to [some say] just over half of their income is made from abortions alone. It is a big business… killing infants.
President Barack Obama went on NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” on Wednesday and incorrectly claimed that the abortion-provider Planned Parenthood does mammograms, a false assertion he has made before, notably during the second presidential debate on Oct. 16.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as CNSNews.com has reported, has confirmed that no Planned Parenthood facility in the United States is licensed to do mammograms.
Though Planned Parenthood claims that women depend on them for prenatal care, Live Action investigators had an incredibly hard time finding facilities that offered it—though they found plenty offering abortions. Live Action contacted all 41 Planned Parenthood affiliates where undercover recording is permitted by state law, and only 5 facilities out of 97 said they provided prenatal care.
This is a long-awaited follow-up to a similar investigation about claims from Planned Parenthood about breast-cancer screening and diagnostics. In an earlier round of debate over barring federal funds from flowing to Planned Parenthood, Barack Obama argued that cutting off funds would endanger their ability to provide mammograms, but that claim turned out to be false. PP’s executives also claim that “one in five women depend on Planned Parenthood for health care,” which FactCheck.org demonstrated was way, way off; it’s closer to one in 30, and they offer no unique services that women can’t find at other clinics — except abortions.
Still, the sourcing on the start of the video looks a little thin, so it behooves people to check the Planned Parenthood website. Sure enough, they have a portal for pre-natal care, and a big button to click labeled “Find A Health Center & Book An Appointment.” However, the next page is their standard clinic search page, and it might be tough to spot that the term “pre-natal care” does not appear on the list of services provided by their clinics. It does list “Pregnancy Testing & Services,” but what exactly does that comprise? It’s not pre-natal care at most of these clinics:
pregnancy testing
abortion services
abortion referrals
adoption referrals
fertility awareness education
pregnancy planning services
trained staff to discuss your options with you if you are pregnant
trained staff to talk with you about early pregnancy loss (miscarriage)
The only mention of pre-natal care on the Tempe, AZ website (where the first call is placed) is this: “If you choose to continue a pregnancy, we will provide you with a list of resources to help you obtain prenatal care.”…
The next time you hear some feminist in a pink hat screaming about how Planned Parenthood is the ONLY place for women to get care, just remember that Care=Abortion. And pretty much nothing else.
We already know that Planned Parenthood doesn’t actually do mammograms (that tidbit came from Cecile Richards’s own mouth, no less). And for all their talk of providing “women’s healthcare” – the more evidence that actually comes out, the more we see that they don’t do much of that either. Providing abortions is where their bread is buttered and that’s what they focus on. Even to the point where they push pregnant women who simply come in for counseling to get the abortion, whether they want to or not (that was shown quite plainly in several of the Center for Medical Progress videos from a couple years ago).
But if Planned Parenthood is so obsessed with providing medical care for women, how do they feel about providing care for pregnant women. And I mean pregnant women who want to keep their babies, rather than let Planned Parenthood chop them up and sell them to the highest bidder?
Well… about that –
A new video has just been released from Live Action. Women with the group went to 97 Planned Parenthood clinics seeking prenatal care. And of those 97 clinics, only five provided prenatal care –
The below information comes from two articles:
For Planned Parenthood Abortion Stats, ‘3 Percent’ And ’94 Percent’ Are Both Misleading. (WASHINGTON POST)
The Most Meaningless Abortion Statistic Ever (SLATE)