Planned Parenthood is now reporting record-high numbers of abortions nationwide.
“Planned Parenthood reported a record-high number of abortions and government funding for 2018-2019, despite encountering a wave of Republican-led measures designed to restrict resources and access to the controversial procedure,” reports Fox News.
The organization’s annual report released on Monday showed that Planned Parenthood received a whopping $617 million in taxpayer funds for the fiscal year ending in June 2018 — a full 9% increase from the previous year and representing 37% of its overall organizational funding. Those funds could decline with the next fiscal year, given the Trump administration’s efforts to strip Planned Parenthood with “executive-level funding for clinics that refer clients for abortion.”
Acting Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson said in the report that the organization has been forced out of government-funded programs due to “unethical” gag rules on referring women for abortions.
“We stand at an inflection point for reproductive health and rights,” Johnson said. “Our opponents moved to dismantle our nation’s program for affordable birth control this year, forcing providers like Planned Parenthood out of the program with an unethical gag rule.”
Pro-life groups were largely frustrated with Planned Parenthood’s reported figures. Alison Centofante, director of external affairs for Live Action, said the record-high numbers only proves that Planned Parenthood needs to be stripped of its governmental funds.
“This abortion machine, which is responsible for the taking of more than 345,000 preborn lives this year — a number consistently on the rise — should be defunded immediately and shut down,” said Centofante.
Fox News provided further background on Planned Parenthood’s source of government funding, which goes beyond the federal and into state and local governments:
Other than through Congress, the group receives state and local grants in addition to money through Medicaid reimbursements. It also stands to receive a massive influx of cash if Democrats take the presidency and repeal the Hyde Amendment, a historically bipartisan measure that blocked federal funding for most abortions. A large sum of its money – $591.3 million – came from private contributions and bequests.
While some states have tried severing funding to the organization, they’ve faced legal challenges along the way. Over the past few years, Planned Parenthood has joined with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union to challenge a veritable onslaught of pro-life measures throughout the U.S.
Speaking with Fox News, famed Planned Parenthood defector Abby Johnson, who has repeatedly accused the organization of treating abortion as a for-profit enterprise, said that Planned Parenthood has only ramped up its efforts.
“Planned Parenthood is laser-focused on promoting abortion over any other service,” Johnson told the outlet. “They now run abortion-only clinics in several cities and have given up any semblance of trying to hide behind ‘family planning.’ They fired Dr. Wen because she wanted to provide more services to women than just abortion. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s largest abortion vendor and their annual report only solidifies that fact.”
Planned Parenthood has always maintained that abortion constitutes just 4% of the organization’s services. Pro-life advocates have countered that assertion, arguing that Planned Parenthood manipulates the statistics to conceal its profitability. As Lila Rose stated in a video with PragerU:
They count every “discrete clinical interaction” as its own service. What is a “discrete clinical interaction”? Pretty much anything you do from the moment you walk into one of their clinics.
I’ll give you an example. Let’s say a woman comes into Planned Parenthood for one service—an abortion. Before providing an abortion, Planned Parenthood has to confirm that the woman is pregnant, right? So, they administer another service—a pregnancy test. That’s two services! Then, after the abortion, on your way out the door, they hand you a prescription. That’s three services!
And there are many other services provided during the abortion process that Planned Parenthood claims as “discrete clinical interactions.”