During Saturday’s GOP primary debate, Donald Trump said that Planned Parenthood — America’s largest abortion business — does “wonderful things having to do with women’s health.” He added, “but not as it relates to abortion.”
Asked to name some of these “wonderful things” on CNN Monday, Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson said “cervical cancer screenings” for poor women without many options for health care providers.
Neither comment, unfortunately, portrays Planned Parenthood accurately. They lack the context for these so-called “wonderful things”: hundreds of hours of shocking undercover footage in which top Planned Parenthood officials discuss the harvest and sale of fetal organs.
The remarks also do not clarify Mr. Trump’s position on Planned Parenthood funding and if he supports congressional efforts to reroute millions in taxpayer funding from the profit-driven abortion business to the more than 13,000 comprehensive health care clinics nationwide.
Mr. Trump and his staff need only look to the most recent Planned Parenthood annual report to discover that this has been a bad investment for taxpayers.
Despite a five percent increase in taxpayer funding for the group, over the last reported fiscal year 2014-2015, non-abortion services at Planned Parenthood have seen a dramatic drop:
- Cancer screening and prevention services dropped by 27 percent in just one year, and by 57 percent since 2010.
- Contraceptive services dropped by nearly 18 percent in just one year, and are down 20 percent since 2010.
- STI/STD prevention and treatment services are down nearly 6 percent, and “other services” are down by 27 percent over one year.
Only abortions did not decline dramatically. In 2013-2014, Planned Parenthood performed 323,999 abortions, a slight one percent decrease over the previous year (327,653). Over the past three reported years (2012-2014), they have ended the lives of nearly one million babies (978,818) through abortion.
Women have the most to gain from the reallocation of Planned Parenthood’s millions of taxpayer dollars to comprehensive health care clinics.
These whole-woman centers (find the closest to you at www.getyourcare.org) outnumber Planned Parenthood facilities 20 to 1 nationwide, and exist in rural and urban areas. They are already well-serving women in their localities by providing them with all of the same preventatives services Planned Parenthood offers, without performing abortions on demand.
Marjorie Dannenfelser is the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, a national pro-life organization dedicated to electing leaders and advancing legislation to reduce and ultimately end abortion.
