Thursday, March 28, 2024

Report: Planned Parenthood Does a Lot of Abortion — And Little Else

Planned Parenthood loves to claim that abortions represent only “3 percent” of its services, and that they provide “essential” and “irreplacable care” in communities across the country. They often tout services like breast exams (which are not mammograms), pap smears, and STD tests. But a new report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute shows that Planned Parenthood dominates the abortion industry — and does very little else.

Planned Parenthood performed 328,000 abortions in the last fiscal year — 35 percent of all abortions in the country, making them by far the largest abortion provider in the United States. In comparison, Walmart controls only 17 percent of the grocery industry. Think of Planned Parenthood as the Amazon of abortion — they dominate the industry.

But while Planned Parenthood performs 35 percent of all abortions, they provide only 1.4 percent of all HIV tests, and less than 1 percent of all pap tests — far from essential.

In fact, for every 1 Planned Parenthood center, there are 23 community health centers providing the same services — except abortion. That’s 14,878 community health centers to 639 Planned Parenthood centers. Even Kmart has almost as many locations as Planned Parenthood.

And Planned Parenthood continues to increase the number of abortions they perform while decreasing the number of services they provide. From 2011-2016, abortions at Planned Parenthood increased 25 percent, while the number of breast exams and pap tests they provided decreased by 37 percent.

Planned Parenthood had only 2.4 million unique clients last year. That number sounds big, but there are 323 million people in the United States. That means Planned Parenthood served only 0.7 percent of the population. If Planned Parenthood is so essential and irreplaceable for the general public, how come 99.3 percent of us don’t go there?

If every Planned Parenthood center closed tomorrow, would anyone miss them?

Click here to see the infographic from the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Photo credit: American Life League via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

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