Planned Parenthood CEO’s false mammogram claim exposed

Contact: Kate Bryan, 323.454.3304, media@liveaction.org

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 30–A series of new undercover phone calls reveals that contrary to the claims of Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards and other supporters of the nation’s largest abortion chain, the organization does not provide mammograms for women.

In the tapes, a Live Action actor calls 30 Planned Parenthood clinics in 27 different states, inquiring about mammograms at Planned Parenthood. Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells her she will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admit that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure. “We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” admits a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona. Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, KS explains to the caller, “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics.”

Opponents of defunding Planned Parenthood have argued in Congress and elsewhere that the organization provides many vital health care services other than abortion, such as mammograms. Most prominently, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards recently appeared on The Joy Behar Show to oppose the Pence Amendment to end Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer subsidies, claiming, “If this bill ever becomes law, millions of women in this country are gonna lose their healthcare access–not to abortion services–to basic family planning, you know, mammograms.”

The calls were recorded by Live Action, the youth-led pro-life group responsible for recent undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood staff, from management on down, willing to aid and abet the sex trafficking of young girls at 7 clinics in 4 different states. Live Action president Lila Rose says the new recordings further confirm Planned Parenthood’s corruption: “Planned Parenthood is first and foremost an abortion business, but Planned Parenthood and its allies will say almost anything to try and cover up that fact and preserve its taxpayer funding. It’s not surprising that an organization found concealing statutory rape and helping child sex traffickers would misrepresent its own services so brazenly, playing on women’s fears in order to protect their tax dollars.”

Former Planned Parenthood Director Abby Johnson notes that the recordings demonstrate Planned Parenthood is not a comprehensive health care provider. “For so long PP has touted that they are a provider of mammogram services.  This is just one of the lies that PP uses to draw people into their clinics.  PP is not able to provide quality services on their own, so they are forced to lie to the public about services they don’t provide–and mammograms are just one of those services.”

Both Rose and Johnson call on Congress to revoke all taxpayer subsidies from Planned Parenthood. In the last reported year, Planned Parenthood received $363 million in government money.

The new undercover recordings are available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq0kBkUZbvQ

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