On a recent Saturday evening, millions of Americans were glued to the NFL playoffs, but that wasn’t the case for the folks at Planned Parenthood. While you were watching the Titans upset the Patriots on the gridiron, the nation’s largest abortion business dropped its latest annual report.
Why would an organization that takes pride in its work and has nothing to hide bury its annual report on a Saturday evening? If you’re Planned Parenthood, an organization that promotes “shouting your abortion,” why would you whisper the news that you performed 345,672 abortions, an increase of nearly 13,000 from the previous year?
Perhaps you would release the report quietly because, if you’re Planned Parenthood, you would rather promote the narrative that you care about women’s health, not just abortion, and certainly not about increasing your profits.
But the numbers don’t lie.
When abortions make up 95% of your pregnancy-resolving services, there’s little room for prenatal care, miscarriage care, or even adoption referrals. Thus, as in past years, for every adoption referral Planned Parenthood made last year, it carried out nearly 81 abortions — that is, one baby alive today for more than four score dead.
Nothing so clearly demonstrates Planned Parenthood’s callous disregard for women’s health and well-being as the July 2019 firing of Leana Wen, then the organization’s president. Wen was removed over “philosophical differences,” which just happened to be whether Planned Parenthood would focus more on preventative healthcare services, or what the organization touts as one of its key focuses, or on a “stridently political, abortion-first philosophy,” as Wen put it.
Not surprisingly, Planned Parenthood decided to “double down” (Wen’s own words again) on the business of abortion.
If you’re the nation’s largest abortion chain, cornering the abortion market at 40% of the national market and more than 60%-70% in some states, that’s where the money is. In 2018 to 2019, Planned Parenthood reported nearly $1.64 billion in income, with just over $591 million coming from private contributions. At Planned Parenthood, cutting parenthood short by eliminating unborn children is big business.
Yet, even with all the money flowing in from selling abortions, Planned Parenthood continues to take money from hardworking people. Last year, taxpayer funding hit a record high of $616.8 million, or almost $1.7 million per day.
Can you imagine an organization with $2 billion in net assets needing money from you? Do you consider that a good investment? We certainly don’t, but some politicians in Washington do, as does Planned Parenthood’s legion of lobbyists.
In a world where Planned Parenthood can’t get enough of everything abortion-related, there’s no room for the old refrain of “safe, legal, and rare.” Even as the number of abortions nationally continues a long-term drop, Planned Parenthood finds ever more innovative ways to get more abortion consumers. The organization will stop at nothing to make abortion on demand through birth commonplace and pad its bottom line.
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Take a look at this year’s presidential contest if you need any proof. Last summer, Planned Parenthood hosted a candidate forum solely focused on its issues and had 20 candidates agree to expand abortion on demand up until birth, the new litmus test for these contenders and for their party, once home to millions of pro-life Democrats.
Not only do they have your taxpayer dollars, the largest swath of the U.S. abortion market, and every one of the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, they also have the media and Hollywood on their side. The media consistently characterize abortion “rights” favorably, while publications such as Self Magazine and Teen Vogue look to normalize abortions among the young, especially so-called self-managed abortions. Under this regimen, alone and often without medical or counseling support, women and girls take two pills that can cause life-threatening complications, such as a severe hemorrhage or infection from failing to remove all the baby’s body parts.
Still, Hollywood caters to Planned Parenthood with HBO’s show Veep making light of abortion and ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy talking about the ease of taking the abortion pill. In fact, Planned Parenthood has a director of arts and entertainment whose sole focus is to partner with Hollywood to get its own slant on abortion into movie and television storylines, and into your homes.
If you see more policymakers talk about abortion as part of routine family planning or see an actress accept a Golden Globe and say her abortion made that award possible or if your daughter gets abortion pills on campus, maybe the stigma goes away.
Or maybe the reality exposed in this depressing annual report sinks in: Planned Parenthood profits from abortion.
LifeNews Note: Marjorie Dannenfelser (@marjoriesba) is president of the national pro-life group the Susan B. Anthony List. Chuck Donovan (@cantdon) is president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research and education arm of the Susan B. Anthony List.
