Five Truths about Planned Parenthood

Anyone who believes PP is primarily concerned with the health of women and girls needs to look at the record.
Charmaine Yoest
April 26, 2011

As the 2012 budget battles began, Clare Coleman, CEO of the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, took to the pages of the Washington Post. In a piece called “Five Myths about Planned Parenthood,” she argued that defunding the organization was an ignoble goal for members of Congress looking to cut the bloated federal budget.

She said she wanted to address “misperceptions” about the abortion-industry giant. She was joined in her goal on the front page of the Washington Post by reporter Sandhya Somashekhar, who painted a picture of Planned Parenthood that minimized the role abortion plays at the organization’s health-care affiliates.

In presenting Planned Parenthood as mainly focused on prevention, Ms. Coleman neglects to mention several statistics, gleaned from the organization’s own annual reports and fact sheets, that illustrate its heavy (and increasing) involvement in abortion, as well as its practices that routinely place women’s health and safety secondary to its own bottom line.

While the Washington Post declined to present an alternative to the Planned Parenthood way of thinking, there are a multitude of other facts to consider. To add to the discussion of whether Planned Parenthood should continue to be funded, let’s consider five truths about an industry that receives more than $360 million in taxpayer subsidies annually. the rest