Calls Confirm Planned Parenthood Misleads on Offering Mammograms

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Mar 30, 2011   |   10:02AM   |   Washington, DC

The pro-life organization responsible for recent videos showing Planned Parenthood offering abortions to alleged sex traffickers who prey on women finds the abortion business is misleading about mammograms.

As LifeNews.com reported in February, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards joined the talk show of pro-abortion activist Joy Behar and defended Planned Parenthood against legislation in Congress seeking to revoke its federal taxpayer funding.

“If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are going to lose their health care access, not to abortion services, to basic family planning – you know, mammograms,” she claimed.

Previously, LifeNews.com and pro-life blogger Jill Stanek followed up with phone calls to various Planned Parenthood centers and confirmed they do not do mammograms.

Today, Live Action released videotaped footage of calls to 30 Planned Parenthood centers nationwide in 27 different states where abortion facility staff were asked whether or not mammograms could be performed on site. Every one of the Planned Parenthood centers admitted they could not do mammograms. Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells the women calling that they will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admit that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure.

“We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” admits a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona while a staffer at Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kansas tells a caller, “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics.”

Live Action president Lila Rose says the new recordings further confirm Planned Parenthood’s corruption.

“Planned Parenthood is first and foremost an abortion business, but Planned Parenthood and its allies will say almost anything to try and cover up that fact and preserve its taxpayer funding,” she told LifeNews.com. “It’s not surprising that an organization found concealing statutory rape and helping child sex traffickers would misrepresent its own services so brazenly, playing on women’s fears in order to protect their tax dollars.”

Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director in Texas, also condemned Planned Parenthood’s misleading statements on mammograms.

“For so long PP has touted that they are a provider of mammogram services,” she said. “This is just one of the lies that Planned Parenthood uses to draw people into their clinics.  PP is not able to provide quality services on their own, so they are forced to lie to the public about services they don’t provide–and mammograms are just one of those services.”

Both Rose and Johnson call on Congress to revoke all taxpayer subsidies from Planned Parenthood. In the last reported year, Planned Parenthood received $363 million in government money.

Update: Planned Parenthood is hitting back, according to a statement send to CBN national correspondent David Brody from Stuart Schear, Vice President for Communications of Planned Parenthood.

“Live Action has a documented history of twisting facts to suit its extreme political agenda, and this video is just the latest example of a false charge.

“Planned Parenthood provides a wide range of preventive health care services to millions of women through its 800 health centers including contraception, Pap tests,  annual exams, HIV and other STI tests, and lifesaving breast exams.

“Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses provide more than 800,000 breast cancer screenings annually. We offer breast exams at every one of our family planning health centers. Like the vast majority of primary care physicians and ob-gyns, we refer our patients to other facilities for mammograms when indicated based on a breast exam, age or family history.”