For years, Planned Parenthood has proffered the lie that abortions only comprise 3 percent of the so-called “services” the abortion behemoth offers. The purpose of the lie is transparent, a marketing ploy to brand Planned Parenthood as something other than an abortion business. But the truth is that without committing a staggering number of abortions each year and receiving beaucoup taxpayer bucks, Planned Parenthood would quickly go bankrupt. So let’s dive into the numbers, which are, in fact, quite straightforward.
First, to give the illusion that abortion is only a tiny part of what Planned Parenthood does, the abortion business constructed a creative method of counting expressly designed to diminish the prominence of abortion at their facilities. This method counts all Planned Parenthood “services” equally. Say a woman goes to Planned Parenthood for an abortion – and only an abortion. Planned Parenthood will report the miscellaneous items related to her visit as separate services equal to the abortion. So while the reality of abortion as Planned Parenthood’s big business is simple, Planned Parenthood does some serious mental gymnastics to concoct their reporting methods.
Planned Parenthood’s 2014 annual report states that the business saw about 2.5 million clients and administered about 10 million so-called “services.” Say Planned Parenthood gives a woman a pregnancy test and an ultrasound, commits an abortion, and sends her home with a condom or pack of birth control pills. This amounts to 4 “services,” or “discrete clinical interactions,” as Planned Parenthood calls them. Thus, the abortion, according to this counting method, only comprised 25 percent of the woman’s visit, even though she was there for an abortion.
By this math, as a new Live Action report notes, even if every single woman who came to Planned Parenthood underwent an abortion, abortion would still account for only 25 percent of the “services” offered at the business. And, as many Pro-Lifers have asked, if abortion is really such a small slice of the Planned Parenthood revenue pie, why does the abortion business go berserk at the very mention of legislation aimed at reducing the national abortion rate? Answer: because Planned Parenthood is an abortion conglomerate. Period.
Adding to the damning evidence against Planned Parenthood’s claims is the fact that PP’s non-abortion services are on rapid decline. Breast exams and pap smears, for example, have taken a nosedive as “abortion quotas” and “abortion de-stigmatization” campaigns have taken center stage. In fact, preventive services at Planned Parenthood have been cut by more than half in recent years as the focus has shifted more and more to drumming up abortion sales.
Pro-Life investigators have debunked and exposed this counting method for years. But recently, even mainstream news outlets have become incredulous at Planned Parenthood’s 3 percent myth and the ubiquitous nature of this lie’s use in pop culture. Slate senior editor Rachael Larimore called Planned Parenthood’s universally-touted 3 percent myth “the most meaningless abortion statistic ever.” Likewise, fact-checkers at the Washington Post gave Planned Parenthood’s 3% myth 3 Pinocchios for boasting “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.”
The bottom line? When you think Planned Parenthood, think abortion.