Former manager: Planned Parenthood ‘views a woman’s body as a profit center’

Today, at a Congressional hearing, former Planned Parenthood manager, Susan Thayer, spoke out. She worked for the abortion giant for nearly two decades. (You can find her story here.)

Thayer states that her personal goals were to help women and to reduce abortions. During her time at Planned Parenthood, she came to realize that the organization’s goals were very contrary to her own, telling Congress that “no business, certainly no health-care business should view a woman’s body as a profit center, but that is exactly what Planned Parenthood does.“

Thayer referenced Planned Parenthood’s “corporate culture” in her testimony, revealing that “over time, I learned I was wrong to trust Planned Parenthood.” She saw firsthand how the abortion giant takes advantage of women and terrible circumstances, using them for fundraising opportunities.

Thayer’s written testimony related this example:

One of the first times that I saw the truth about Planned Parenthood was in 2002 when a recycling center in my small Iowa town discovered the remains of a newborn child. The Sheriff came to my clinic, seeking records of women who may have been the mother of this child who was born alive and killed. This was not an abortion. It was a murder investigation. So, maybe naively, I thought Planned Parenthood would want to cooperate.

Instead, Planned Parenthood leadership saw this as a fundraising opportunity. Rather than trying to quietly deal with this very sad story, leadership leaked it to the Des Moines Register and capitalized on it, making claims in the media that I knew were completely wrong but which kept the money coming in from around the country to fight this imaginary injustice. A mother killed her born alive child and Planned Parenthood was more interested in profiting off the attention than helping to solve the crime.

Thayer testified that the money-making culture spilled over into multiple areas of Planned Parenthood. “Birth control pills,” she said, “were dispensed to women” without ever being seen by a medical professional.

Great pressure was put on women to choose abortion on the spot at Planned Parenthood. Instead of letting a woman come to terms with the new fact that she was pregnant, she was urged to choose web-cam abortion now. As Thayer testified, web-cam abortions are one of Planned Parenthood’s biggest money-makers:

“A woman with a positive pregnancy test would be offered a web-cam abortion on the spot so she couldn’t change her mind,“ Thayer described. She would be “told to take the first set of pills at the clinic,” right away. And no doubt, if women were to change their minds later at home, when the reality of their new baby finally sunk in, the option of abortion reversal would no doubt never be revealed to them by Planned Parenthood. (Information and help with abortion reversals can be found here.)

If a woman experienced health problems with her web-cam abortion, Planned Parenthood sent her to an ER, but “women were told to say they were experiencing a miscarriage” instead of giving facts that could aid in their medical care. This, too, demonstrated to Thayer that Planned Parenthood did not share her concern for the health of women.  When Thayer “expressed [her] concerns that web-cam abortions were unsafe and possibly illegal,” she was shut down, her concerns entirely rejected.

Thayer’s written testimony explained her discovery that Planned Parenthood also regularly commits Medicaid fraud (more details here):

…Planned Parenthood’s focus on its bottom line doesn’t just ignore women’s best interests. It also takes millions of excess dollars from taxpayers. My federal False Claims Act complaint alleges that Planned Parenthood filed false claims totaling about $28 million with Iowa’s Medicaid program for (1) illegally dispensing “medically unnecessary” quantities of oral contraceptive pills and birth control patches to C-Mail Medicaid patients and doing so without a prescription; (2) fraudulently billing the Iowa Medicaid program for abortion-related services; and (3) coercing “donations” from Medicaid patients.

The Daily Caller reported on Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid fraud, quoting Thayer:

“Because I had access to the billing system for the whole affiliate, I also know that Planned Parenthood would bill Medicaid for abortion-related services – ultrasounds, office visits, blood tests, medications, and other services that were part of an abortion,” the testimony [Thayer’s] reads. “These types of Planned Parenthood Medicaid billings for abortion-related services have also been found by government auditors in New York and Washington.”

Planned Parenthood’s violations do not benefit women; as Thayer puts it, they “all benefit[] Planned Parenthood’s bottom line.” Due to its abuse, fraud, and corruption, Planned Parenthood “does not deserve to be trusted by any American – woman or man.”

Read Thayer’s full testimony here.