Planned Parenthood Chapter Quits, Forced by National to Do Abortions

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Dec 21, 2010   |   11:59AM   |   Corpus Christi, TX

A Texas-based Planned Parenthood affiliate has resigned as a member of the national organization because Planned Parenthood Federation of America wanted it to do abortions.

Local officials say PPFA is instituting a mandate that all of its affiliates across the nation offer facilities where abortions are done and the head of Planned Parenthood of South Texas says her group doesn’t want to add abortions.

CEO Amanda Stukenberg told the Corpus Christi Caller newspaper that PPST doesn’t need to do abortions because independent abortion business already exist in the area, so her group has focused solely on promoting contraception and birth control.

“We have never provided abortions,” she said. “Our position is that if that is a need in your community, fine. There are far greater needs in our area than abortion. We feel that women here have options. We don’t need to duplicate services.”

Stutenberg told the newspaper that national Planned Parenthood officials told her they want to standardize their operations nationwide and that includes a requirement to for all affiliates to do abortions.

Instead, Stukenberg said the Planned Parenthood chapter will change its name to Family Planning of the Coastal Bend and she and her board of directors feel confident they can financially survive leaving the Planned Parenthood abortion business.

The requirement to do abortions is not a surprise given the resignation of another Texas Planned Parenthood official last year. Abby Johnson quit her job as the director of the Planned Parenthood in Bryan/College Station after participating in an abortion prompted her to change her mind and become pro-life.

She has said her Planned Parenthood facility also faced pressure to do abortions — including having a quota of abortions she was required to meet.

“There are definitely client goals,” she said last November. “We’d have a goal every month for abortion clients and for family planning clients.”

She said her facility did abortions every other Saturday but began increasing the number of abortions in order to increase revenues. One method involved increasing the number of abortions done with the dangerous mifepristone abortion drug.

“One of the ways they were able to up the number of patients that they saw was they started doing the RU-486 chemical abortions all throughout the week,” she said.

Johnson told WorldNetDaily that abortions using the drug, which has killed 13 women worldwide and injured at least 1,100 in the United States alone according to the FDA, would bring in between $505 and $695 depending on the age of the baby at the time of the abortion.

She said the move to increase abortions came as Planned Parenthood experienced financial difficulties due to the troubled economy.

“Abortion is the most lucrative part of Planned Parenthood’s operations,” she said. “Even though they’re two separate corporations, all of the money goes into one pot. With the family planning corporation really suffering, they depend on the abortion corporation to balance their budget, help get them out of the hole and help make income for the company.”

“They really wanted to increase the number of abortions so that they could increase their income,” she told the news service.

Pressure to increase abortions is also borne out in the recent annual reports Planned Parenthood released publicly — which show Planned Parenthood increasing the number of abortions it does annually and increasing its share of the abortion market to more than 25 percent.

The nation’s largest abortion business released a factsheet in September showing the number of abortions it performed in 2008 increased to 324,008, a 6.1 percent increase over the 305,310 abortions it did in 2007. In 1997, Planned Parenthood did about 160,000 abortions.

The report shows Planned Parenthood’s 95 affiliates operated 865 centers — all of which either do abortions, give out the dangerous abortion drug RU 486 (Mifepristone) or make abortion referrals. The abortion business says it has 33,000 staff and volunteers nationwide.

The September companion report Planned Parenthood issued showed, despite claims to the contrary, Planned Parenthood’s number one agenda is abortion.

The document boasts that the number of adoption referrals provided by Planned Parenthood increased by over 100 percent from 2,410 referrals in 2006 to 4,912 referrals in 2007.

However, the total number of adoption referrals still amounts to a number equal to only one-third of the increase in the number of abortions done by Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Planned Parenthood also says it helped just under 11,000 women in 2007 with prenatal care and pregnancy help services.

Yet, prenatal care and adoption referrals resulted for only 5 percent of the total services provided to women in 2007 while abortions accounted for 95 percent of the services that year, according to Planned Parenthood’s own figures.