* Advocates taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand
Today, PPFA is the largest abortion provider in the United States, with some 850 clinics around the country (down from a peak of 938 in 1995). PPFA purports to offer "a wide range of medical and counseling services and health care education," but its primary business is providing abortion services. In the 2003-2004 fiscal year, the organization increased the number of abortions performed at its facilities by 6.1 percent (over the 2002-2003 figure) to 244,628. At an average cost of $400 per abortion, it is estimated that PPFA took in $104 million from surgical abortions in 2003-2004 -- the first time this number surpassed $100 million in a single year -- accounting for 34 percent of its $302.6 million clinic income that year. Planned Parenthood completed 138 abortions for every adoption referral it made to an outside agency in 2004.
During the 2004-2005 fiscal year, PPFA reported 1,414 adoption referrals (one adoption for every 180 abortions). In 2005-2006, the organization released no information about the number of adoption referrals it made. According to Jim Sedlack, Executive Director of an anti-abortion organization called Stop Planned Parenthood, “we can only assume the number was so low that Planned Parenthood didn’t want to embarrass itself by revealing it.” “You will not find the word ‘adoption’ anywhere in the PPFA’s 2005-2006 Annual Report,” observed Douglas Scott, Jr., President of Life Decisions International.
According to its annual report, PPFA's income is divided into three major categories: clinic income (fees charged to customers at clinics); donations (gifts from corporations, foundations and individuals); and taxpayer money (grants and contracts from federal, state and local government). During its July 1, 2005 – June 30, 2006 fiscal year, PPFA performed a record 264,943 abortions. It garnered $345.1 million in clinic income (a $1.5 million drop from the previous year -- the first such decline in the organization’s history); took in $212.2 million in donations (a drop of $3.6 million from the previous year); and received record taxpayer funding of $305.3 million (exceeding the previous year’s total by $32.6 million). Total income reached a record $902.8 million while total expenses came to $847.0 million, leaving a profit of $55.8 million. According to Douglas Scott, Jr., “[O]n June 30, 2006, PPFA had net assets valued at $839.8 million.”
New advances in modern science and technology have affected PPFA's birth control and abortion businesses. In a March 2004 news report, PPFA praised the merits of "emergency contraception" (a.k.a. the "morning-after pill") and Mifepristone (a.k.a. the RU-486 "abortion pill"). PPFA, which accounts for nearly one out of every five abortions performed in the U.S. each year, distributes these pills to many of its clients. In 2004 the organization conducted an aggressive marketing campaign resulting in a 22.2 percent increase in RU-486 sales. PPFA markets RU-486 as an "Emergency Contraception Kit." Between 1999 and 2004, PPFA sales of these kits multiplied more than tenfold -- from 72,024 in 1999 to 774,482 in 2004. In large measure due to such sales volumes, in 2004 PPFA enjoyed its 18th consecutive year of record total income($810 million).
Each year, PPFA presents a Margaret Sanger Award, the organization's "highest honor," to an individual who best promotes the group's values and ideals. Past recipients of the award include Kathleen Turner, the famous actress and abortion advocate; Robin Chandler Duke, the former president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League and President Clinton's ambassador to Norway; Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who wrote the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion; and Hillary Clinton (who won the award in 2009).
One of PPFA’s domestic programs is Teenwire.com, which it describes as "the leading website for teens needing information about sexual health," and a source that is "committed to giving [teenagers] the facts about sex so that [they] can use this information to make [their] own responsible choices." The website dispenses advice on topics ranging from homosexuality to masturbation to abortion.
PPFA opposes any limitations on access to abortion, including the procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion, and also opposes mandatory parental notification for minors wishing to undergo the procedure. Approximately one-third of PPFA's clients are girls younger than 18 who live with one or both parents. Some 97 percent of these girls qualify for federal assistance to reimburse a provider of social services. This is because PPFA teaches its affiliates how to exploit federal "family planning" programs by qualifying as many clients as possible for federal subsidies of pregnancy tests, contraceptives, and abortions covered by Medicaid.
PPFA has two fee scales: one for cash-paying clients, and another for those who receive government support. As of 2002, cash customers paid an average of $16 per pregnancy test; those who qualified for government assistance generated payments of $57 apiece flowing into PPFA's coffers. The respective fees charged for other services and procedures are similarly disproportionate. About 30 percent of PPFA's income each year derives from taxpayer dollars.
In the 2004 presidential election, PPFA for the first time endorsed a candidate -- Democrat John Kerry. Gloria Feldt, who served as PPFA's President from 1996 to January 2005, explained that the decision to back Kerry was made in response to "the Bush administration's war on choice." During her tenure at PPFA's helm, she helped to introduce the abortion and emergency contraception pills, and was also one of the chief organizers of the April 25, 2004 "March for Women's Lives" held in Washington, D.C. -- a rally that drew more than a million demonstrators advocating for unrestricted access totaxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand.
PPFA has another significant connection to the Democratic Party. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean(who is a medical doctor by training) once served as a board member of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, and worked as an intern in an OB/GYN rotation at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Burlington, Vermont in the late 1970s.
PPFA's current President is Cecile Richards, a veteran labor and political organizer who has also been President of America Votes; Deputy Chief of Staff to Nancy Pelosi; Director of a national pro-choice ID project for the Turner Foundation; President of Pro-Choice Vote, the largest 527 political committee in the 2000 election cycle; and Board Member of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
SpokesmanReview.com reports that in the summer of 2007, an actor posing as a racist donor called several Planned Parenthood centers -- in Arkansas, Idaho, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, and other states -- and asked that his donation be earmarked specifically to fund the abortions of African-American babies -- because, he said, he wished to help keep the black population as small as possible. Each PPFA branch that he contacted agreed to process these donations, and none expressed concern about the professed racist intentions of the donor.
It is estimated that 80 percent of Planned Parenthood clinics are located in minority neighborhoods. Black women now have the highest abortion rate of any ethnic group.
On July 17, 2007, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama spoke before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. He lauded the organization "for all the work that you are doing for women all across the country and for families all across the country—and for men, who have enough sense to realize you are helping them, all across the country."
PPFA receives a large portion of its funding from the U.S. government. There are at least 18 federal statutes and hundreds of state and local programs that authorize tax dollars to be spent for "family planning" programs and procedures. Under the Hyde Amendment, however, tax dollars are not supposed to pay specifically for abortions. But PPFA capitalizes on the fact that when federal funds for family planning are administered by state agencies, county health departments, and local school districts, compliance with the law is nearly impossible to enforce.
According to Planned Parenthood's own records, the 332,278 abortions which the organization performed in 2009 accounted for 97.6 percent of all the services it provided that year. Prenatal care and adoption referrals made up the remaining 2.4 percent. With regard to revenues, 37 percent of PPFA's 2009 income derived from abortions.
In 2009-2010, PPFA received $487,400,000 from the U.S. government. Moreover, the organization's total net assetstopped $1 billion for the first time.
In 2012, PPFA strongly supported President Barack Obama's re-election bid against Republican challenger Mitt Romney. In the aftermath of Obama's victory, PPFA executive vice president Dawn Laguens told an EMILY’s List post-election analysis panel that her group's strategy had been to keep Independent/undecided women frightened about Romney’s agenda for as long as possible, and to thereby give Obama an opportunity to win them over. (Specifically, the goal was to convince women that Romney sought to deprive them of access to contraception and abortion.) Beginning in June 2012, saidLaugens, PPFA targeted “a whole group [of women] that, what it looked like we could do, is expand the amount of time they were willing to give the president and the economy to recover. So we could kind of hold them in ‘undecided’ by, in particularly in the presidency, by making Mitt Romney questionable in their mind on our set of issues.” Laguens likened this to keeping an elevator door open “until we could see the economy start to come up and the president’s campaign do that closing argument that really did finally tip them over. And I really think that was the role that we played in there with a lot of independent women.”
In August 2013, it was reported that Washington, DC’s health insurance exchange -- which was created by President Obama’s signature healthcare law -- had awarded a $375,000 to help Planned Parenthood enroll participants in Obamacare. All told, the DC Health Benefit Exchange gave $6.4 million to 35 DC-based groups including local churches as well as healthcare and community organizations.
To view a complete list of the recipients, click here.
In July 2014, The Daily Caller obtained uncensored footage of Planned Parenthood staffers at two clinics in Colorado instructing undercover investigators (posing as underage girls) in a variety of painful sex practices — including biting, chaining, gagging, whipping, choking, bondage, the use of nipple clamps, and more. According to the staffers, such activities were completely safe and normal, so long as the girls maintained “open communication” with their partners.
A member group of the National Council of Women's Organizations, PPFA also receives considerable funding (about 28 percent of its total revenues) from foundations. Among these are the Ahmanson Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Arca Foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Compton Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Educational Foundation of America, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Freddie Mac Foundation, the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Minneapolis Foundation, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, the Ms. Foundation for Women, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Open Society Institute, Pew Charitable Trusts, the Prospect Hill Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, theRockefeller Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, the Simons Foundation, the Stewart R. Mott Charitable Trust, theSummit Charitable Foundation, the Turner Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
A noteworthy former official of PPFA was Faye Wattleton, who served as the organization's president from 1978-92.
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