Planned Parenthood Admits It Does Not Do Mammograms for Women

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Oct 19, 2012   |   12:22PM   |   Washington, DC

The Planned Parenthood abortion business put out a statement in response to this week’s pushback against President Barack Obama for his misleading statement in the Tuesday night debate claiming it does mammograms.

“There are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings,” Obama claimed during the debate.

The statement goes on at length to talk about the referrals Planned Parenthood makes for women — referrals that women can obtain at any legitimate medical health provider that does not also destroy lives in abortions.

“In short, Planned Parenthood helps women nationwide get access to mammograms, as part of the range of health care Planned Parenthood health centers provide to nearly three million people a year. Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses do this like any other primary care provider or ob-gyn does,” it admits.

“Women rely on Planned Parenthood for referrals,” the abortion business admits. “Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses refer patients to other facilities for mammograms.”

Meanwhile, Factcheck.org confirms Planned Parenthood does not actually do mammograms.

At the second presidential debate, President Obama said that women “rely on” Planned Parenthood for mammograms. Actually, mammograms are not performed at the clinics; Planned Parenthood doctors and nurses conduct breast exams and refer patients to other facilities for mammograms.

Obama said: “When Governor Romney says that we should eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, there are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for not just contraceptive care. They rely on it for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings.”

Obama used a similar line again on Oct. 18, telling a Manchester, N.H., crowd: “Governor Romney said he’d end funding for Planned Parenthood, despite all the work it does to provide women with mammograms and breast cancer screenings.”

Women can’t walk into a Planned Parenthood clinic and get a mammogram on the spot. The clinics don’t have mammography equipment.

Ample evidence already confirms Planned Parenthood doesn’t actually perform mammogramms — it merely refers women for them to legitimate medical centers that do — but National Review this week made new calls to clinics to confirm it.

To test the president’s statement in the real world, I called several Planned Parenthood offices in the New York City area today to ask about scheduling a mammogram. “We actually don’t offer that here,” one office told me. “You might want to call 311, they actually have lists of places you could go to.” When I asked, “You don’t provide them like the president said?,” I was told “No.”

Another office told me the following: “We don’t do mammograms, but I could definitely give you other places you could call.” When I mentioned the president’s statement, the woman said, “I’m not even sure because we’ve never offered mammograms.” Of the five offices I called, only the Hempstead, N.Y., location said it offered the service — on Fridays and not by an in-house technician.

When the Komen Foundation announced in February that it would no longer provide grants to Planned Parenthood—partly due to the fact that Planned Parenthood does not directly provide mammograms – its ideological and political supporters sprang into action. They decried Komen’s decision to eliminate funding for this imagined provider of mammograms. Planned Parenthood’s Executive Director, Cecile Richards, , made the claim. So did President Obama. And an unsuspecting public was led to believe that such bold claims, by people who should know, must be true.

Planned Parenthood itself has admitted that it does not perform mammograms for women — something the Komen for the Cure breast cancer charity confirmed last year.

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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.

Then, the organization 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.”

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.”

In September the Obama administration conceded Planned parenthood doesn’t do mammograms.