Report: Congress Should Probe Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jul 7, 2011   |   10:18AM   |   Washington, DC

A national pro-life group has issued a new report featuring a groundbreaking analysis of the nation’s largest abortion business Planned Parenthood. Americans United for Life says it has uncovered evidence of systemic financial irregularities within the abortion giant, which receives more than $363 million in federal and state taxpayer funding, and that Congress should investigate.

AUL staff combed through 20 years of Planned Parenthood financial data and the report documents the known and alleged abuses by Planned Parenthood, including the misuse of federal health care and family planning funds, failure to report criminal child sexual abuse, failure to comply with parental involvement laws, assisting those in engaged in prostitution and/or sex trafficking, and dangerous misuse of the abortion drug RU-486.

The pro-life group poses questions aimed at uncovering the depth of the problems within Planned Parenthood and substantiates, synthesizes and gives clear direction for members of Congress to thoroughly investigate the abortion business.

“Americans United for Life is calling for a Congressional investigation and hearings into the nation’s largest abortion provider,” AUL president Charmaine Yoest told LifeNews.com in a Wednesday statement. “This report provides the intellectual foundation for an investigation of Planned Parenthood as well as revealing gaps in the information available to the American taxpayer, who is forced to subsidize the politically powerful abortion industry.”

“Momentum for defunding the abortion industry comes from the grassroots,” Yoest noted. “More than 70 percent of taxpayers, whether pro-life or pro-abortion, agree that they don’t want their tax monies subsidizing the abortion industry. This is a bi-partisan budget cut available for Congress and every state.”

Yoest said Congress needs to follow the example of several states that have already stopped or cut Planned Parenthood taxpayer funding, including New Jersey, Kansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, Texas and Ohio. The AUL report substantiates, synthesizes, and gives clear direction for the case against Planned Parenthood, which enjoys one-third of a billion in taxpayer support as a result of its intensive lobbying efforts, Yoest noted.

Yoest said the AUL report also shows that, according to the Federal Election Committee, since the 2000 elections, pro-abortion groups have spent more than $205 million dollars in campaign contributions or independent expenditures on behalf of candidates for federal office. In 2010 alone these groups spent over $30 million on federal elections.

Since the 2000 election cycle, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates have disbursed at least $6.8 million through direct contributions and independent expenditures benefiting federal candidates for office. In the 2010 cycle alone, Planned Parenthood and affiliates spent nearly $1.6 million in federal races.

“It is time to find out what happens behind Planned Parenthood’s closed doors and to receive full accounting for the funds taken from American taxpayers to support the abortion industry,” Yoest said.

Yoest said that, while other reports and investigations have dealt with problems with Planned Parenthood on a case-by-case, clinic-by-clinic, and state-by-state basis, this is the only report to demonstrate systemic, organization-wide fraud and abuse – systemic problems that the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, not local affiliates, needs to answer for before Congress. Before other organizations have been defunded, they have often been investigated to determine if they deserve the continued generosity of the American taxpayer, she said.

Planned Parenthood has already issued a statement condemning the report.

“We are proud of the trust millions of women place in us every year to provide high quality health care. We approach our work with a deep sense of responsibility to the patients we serve, and recognize that the importance of our work is growing because in many communities we are often the only source of affordable quality health care for women,” the abortion business said. “This so-called report is a politically driven attack by an organization opposed to birth control and expanded access to birth control. It uses discredited, recycled and misleading claims to attack Planned Parenthood and should be viewed with a skeptical eye.”

See the full report at https://www.aul.org/aul-special-report-the-case-for-investigating-planned-parenthood/