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The Spectacle Blog
Whether or not Planned Parenthood survives the negotiations to prevent a government shutdown, Republicans will have scored a victory if the episode draws more attention to what it is the organization actually does.
Planned Parenthood has done a great job of using the media to cultivate an image of a squeaky-clean organization that provides such unobjectionable-sounding itmes as reproductive health services and family-planning aids in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies and reduce the need for abortion. Despite the fact that the wider media consistently describes them as such, that depiction is not accurate. It can’t be overlooked that Planned Parenthood performs abortions on a massive scale: 332,278 abortions in 2009, more than one-quarter of all abortions nationwide.
Planned Parenthood has success disguising its primary role as an abortion provider, often by claiming that abortions only constitute 3 percent of the services they provide. For instance, this post by the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein is a perfect example of a reporter uncritically reproducing that claim (he even encourages readers to visit Planned Parenthood’s own site for context), including this misleading chart (also from Planned Parenthood):
This misleading presentation is nothing new. In 2007, Charlotte Allen explained that Planned Parenthood bundles services for the purpose of minimizing the role of abortions:
Underneath this veil of media and show-business gossamer is an organization that, contrary to the impression it works hard to create, focuses obsessively on abortion, providing ever more abortions every year, reaching out to an ever-younger clientele. The 3 percent pie slice in the 2005-06 financial report, representing 264,943 abortion customers served, can only be described as deliberately misleading.
One way Planned Parenthood massages the numbers to make its abortion business look trivial is to unbundle its services for purposes of counting. Those 10.1 million different medical procedures in the last fiscal year, for instance, were administered to only 3 million clients. An abortion is invariably preceded by a pregnancy test—a separate service in Planned Parenthood’s reckoning—and is almost always followed at the organization’s clinics by a “going home” packet of contraceptives, which counts as another separate service. Throw in a pelvic exam and a lab test for STDs—you get the picture. In terms of absolute numbers of clients, one in three visited Planned Parenthood for a pregnancy test, and of those, a little under one in three had a Planned Parenthood abortion.
For those reasons, I think this graphic, taken from Planned Parenthood’s data, better illustrates Planned Parenthood’s activities:
Planned Parenthood also spent more than $1 million electing Democrats last year. Taxpayers should not be asked to fund a partisan lobbying organization that performs a quarter of all the abortions in America.
View all comments (18) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Joseph Lawler
http://spectator.org/blog/2011/04/08/planned-parenthood-is-about-ab
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C Bowen| 4.8.11 @ 4:29PM
Makes you wonder why the Republicans kept voting to fund it year after year, doesn't it?
Al Adab| 4.8.11 @ 4:36PM
First, never confuse Republican with Conservative. They are not synonomous. Next, understand that what we have here is the state religion worship of the goddess "Choice" who's sacrement is abortion, ie the sacrifice of children. Do those worshipers actually expect the government to pay for their religious rites?
Clint| 4.8.11 @ 4:45PM
We Tea Party Patriots have Crossed The Rubicon.
We are at War with The Big Government Parasite Leech Spenders.
Don't allow These Parasite Leeches to spend Our Confiscated Taxpayers' Money to Snuff American Babies.
The Tea Party Is Ramping Up to Our Tea Party Tax Day Rallies.
Walk The Talk.
Pelligrino| 4.8.11 @ 5:02PM
Thank you, Mr. Lawler.
Immaturity defined: Never having to grow up.
Abortions defined: Never having to be mature.
God is (it seems) still holding off judgement of our land. If He were to unleash it, none of us could stand.
While we can only offer comfort, counsel, genunie information, and prayers for women who consider aborting as some kind of strange solution, there should never be any official sanction of abortion/murder of babies in our land.
No money for abortions or those who would provide them or counsel for them.
Let's please keep telling these pregnant women who consider abortion that so many families hope to adopt and wait patiently, anxiously for a child.
CalMark| 4.8.11 @ 5:06PM
Irreverent thought:
If abortions are so great, where are gay "couples" who want a "family" going to find kids to adopt?
God Is Truth| 4.8.11 @ 5:40PM
Planned Infanticide is the (Un)American left's Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, etc. Nazi Germany is alive & well in America via the (UN)American left. The American Holocaust will eclipse that of Nazi Germany if it hasn't already & God's judgement on this nation for the Holocaust of abortion on demand will be severe. America will never again be blessed by God until the Holocaust of abortion on demand ceases. If it doesn't cease this nation fully deserves the full wrath of God & there will be nowhere to hide if that occurs.
c. j. acworth| 4.8.11 @ 5:41PM
Picture a McDonalds-like sign in front of every Planned Parenthood clinic showing the results of a typacle abortion and the words "Over 10 million served."
lu-e| 4.8.11 @ 5:48PM
i would seriously hope cantor & boehner DO NOT cave on this issue. a majority of americans are supportive of this stance. support the troops and save babies. what is so damn tough about this choice????????? how come the left NEVER gives in on abortion but the "right" does? first f'n Stupak and now boehner/cantor.
wtf?????
thebardofmurdock | 4.8.11 @ 6:19PM
Legal, Safe and Rare
A fourteen-trillion deficit
Is nothing at to sneer,
But in these times of hope and change
We think we’ve been austere.
Another one-point-five-trillion
And then we’ll start to pare:
We want to keep our budget cuts
All legal, safe and rare.
We know the voters turned us out
The last election day,
And gave the House to radicals,
Hell-bent on foul play.
But voters took a different tack
And did the Senate spare,
So we just treat Republicans
As legal, safe and rare.
Though consequences are to flow
Beyond the ballot box,
In truth we don’t much give a damn
For populi’s clear vox.
So let those new House members
Pass all the bills they dare;
Their chances in the Upper House
Are legal, safe and rare.
And if the House’s budget cuts
Are aimed at NPR,
We’ll brand the cuts extremist hate;
We’ll paint the cuts bizarre.
And if Planned Parenthood should fall
Into the budget snare,
Abortion’s kept, we’ll say, by us
As legal, safe and rare.
Here’s hoping never comes the day
The public starts to seek,
The truth behind our fresh facade
And media technique.
For if they do we run the risk
They may become aware:
Few words can mask the truth as well
As legal, safe and rare.
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 4.8.11 @ 6:40PM
There's an important service missing from Planned Murderhood's pie-chart above, that represents more than 90% of their cliental. You see, Planned Murderhood offers back relief to "all" their customers, by placing chairs in their waiting rooms, where their pregnant clients can sit down, while they're waiting to get an abortion (they're very, very nice chairs!!).
c. j. acworth: It's more like 52,008,665 served since 1973 (* But this excludes NH, CA, and at least one other state, and the figures are based on data up to the fiscal year 2008), so it's probably more like 55,629,665 served (estimated) since 1973. So maybe your McDonald's Golden Arches analogy is spot on, so how about it saying this?
Planned Murderhood
Over 55 Million Served
Blacks Welcome
They'd never be that honest!!
Tina B| 4.8.11 @ 7:07PM
I love the passion guys!
All I can say is, my adoption, as tough it was at the time, was my finest hour. And my baby, now 35, and his wife, parents, inlaws, sister and children think I am the Bomb-diggedy! As I think they are.
Adoption, not abortion (murder), is the finest option of all.
Al Adab| 4.8.11 @ 9:52PM
Let the Democrats and their idolatrous friends of The Left pick this hill to die on. After all, how fitting could it be considering the millions sacrificed to the Idol "Choice" over the years.
nathan| 4.8.11 @ 10:19PM
you were wrong about one thing. ezra klein is not a reporter
Pelligrino| 4.9.11 @ 1:04AM
In just the last decade within these US borders, we have probably aborted children who would have been the next:
Jesse Owens
Thomas Edison
Loretta Lynn
Sugar Ray Leonard
Anton Scalia
Michelle Kwan
Walter Reed
Ella Fitzgerald
Jackie Robinson
Jim Thorpe
Sally Ride
Lonnie Johnson
George Washington Carver
Henry Ford
Scott Joplin
Kit Carson
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Hank Williams
Not my original thoughts. This is a short list and paraphrase of what I heard in a Sunday church service in January of this year.
Tina B| 4.9.11 @ 7:51AM
Amazing that they even mentioned abortion in a church today. Most churches today don't want to go anywhere near the subjects of promiscuity, adultery, divorce, gay marriage, abortion, addictions to porn, alcohol or drugs, and anything that would make the people in the pews squirm.
By cowtowing to polical correctness, they have evolved into organizations of safety and comfort to most, and left us alone with our sin. They are irrelevant buildings filled with praise choruses and happy talk and not much else.
I know not all churches, or I wouldn't read some of the wonderful posts on TAS. However the lukewarmness in many churches that claim to teach Christ and His Way, means they are just not up to the job. They will be spewed when the time comes. And they have let millions slip into the slime of the world's father of lies.
Richard Baker| 4.9.11 @ 2:52PM
Since the founder of Planned Parenthood is the Blessed Margaret Sanger, trying to publicly distance themselves from her ideas on eugenics, particularly for blacks, and the rest of their sordid history by obfusca..er, lying about their activities should be expected. Kill them babies should be their motto, to be sure.
Pelligrino| 4.9.11 @ 7:28PM
Tina, I cannot agree with your overall assessment more. I have had the opportunity to visit many churches in this past year. While I meet many friendly and interesting people, the clergy have indeed -- in so many places -- gone so uselessly, lukewarm, squishy.
We do need to squirm in the pews. I certainly do. We do need to address sin directly, in all its forms. We all engage in it.
A question: When have you last heard a sermon (or sermons) on the Seven Deadly Sins? One of the best sermon series I ever heard in person covered a different one each service over a 14 week period. (Proverbs 6:16-19)
There is a lot to talk about. And like budget choices (national, personal, and family), we try to dodge the issues.
Sadly, what do non Christians so often say to Christians? They tell us that it is our sins/poor witness that hinder them coming to Jesus.
Vlad| 4.13.11 @ 4:30AM
Well, it says that in the 05-06 year, PP served over 3 million women, and provided abortions to about 260,000. I'll accept that depending on how the statistic are tallied, one can reasonably make the claim that more than 3% of their services are abortions. It's closer to 8.6%.
But can we agree that either ~91% or 97% (depending on whose stats you want to believe) of performed services are not abortions, and that this ~91% or 97% significantly decreases the rate of unwanted pregnancies in the United States and, it would therefore be reasonable to conclude, the number of abortions? To reinforce that point, do not forget that a very large proportion of PP's patients are poor women often without health insurance or with only catastrophic coverage who would not otherwise be able to afford birth control (which, God knows, has only rarely stopped people from making bad decisions).
I would also note that it would serve an entirely different purpose to tally what percentage of patients receive what services as the author suggests. To view types of service as percentage of patients would lead to a total above 100% because women obviously do receive multiple services without one of them being an abortion. That has its place, but not necessarily in the argument about what PP's main role is.
It is necessary to tally pregnancy screenings or abortions or whatever else under the rubric of total services rather than percent of individuals receiving a service because a pregnancy screening is a necessary but not sufficient condition for an abortion--one doesn't imply the other. They're not synonomous, so why would you tally them as such? A woman may get a positive pregnancy test and decide to keep the baby and get prenatal care, or keep the baby and go to an OBGYN for care and not use PP again, or get prenatal care and adoption assistance. Or perhaps a test comes back negative and the woman decides to get birth control. Each of these are viable and common scenarios that you can't account for unless you split the services up and compare them as a proportion of "total services" rather than "total patients".