Issues

Planned Parenthood’s cancer survivor video is a misleading act of desperation

Planned Parenthood is in the business of abortion and in the business of pretending that scores of women rely solely on Planned Parenthood centers for legitimate healthcare services — some of which very few of their locations provide (like prenatal care), and even services which none of their locations provide, like mammograms (which even the organization’s CEO lied about for years).

More of the abortion giant’s dishonesty is seen in a recent video on the Planned Parenthood Facebook page. It features the story of Novelyn, a cancer survivor. Any time someone survives this deadly disease is a time to rejoice. Unfortunately, the video doesn’t tell an honest story about Planned Parenthood and its services.

While Planned Parenthood does provide cancer screenings, their market share is minuscule — 1.8 percent of the nation’s breast exams (again, not mammograms) and 0.97 percent of the nation’s Pap smears. With numbers so low, it’s obvious that Planned Parenthood isn’t necessary for these services — women are clearly going elsewhere. Even Planned Parenthood’s own annual reports confirm this. The group’s most recently released 2015-2016 annual report shows that such life-saving services have decreased, and they’ve been on a steep decline for years.

Planned Parenthood has misled and lied to the public before out of desperation to hold on to half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding, which has also increased (along with abortions), while life-saving services decrease. If Planned Parenthood truly cared about women’s health, they would gladly step aside so that the Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs), which outnumber them by the thousands, could step in to take that money and take care of patients.

Inspirational music plays as Novelyn shares her journey. After feeling a lump in her armpit, she confirmed with a Planned Parenthood clinician that she had a lump in her breast. Again, what Planned Parenthood did was not a mammogram, and Novelyn was one of only 1.8 percent of women who got their breast exams done at a Planned Parenthood. Novelly says the employee “quickly got me a mammogram” — but since CEO Cecile Richards herself has admitted that Planned Parenthood doesn’t have mammogram machines, this can only mean that she received a referral. The way this is stated on the video is incredibly misleading — but then, this should be no surprise, coming from Planned Parenthood.

In the video Novelyn discusses being “an example” to her daughters — and as a cancer survivor, she certainly is! But what’s unfortunate is that she’s chosen to use her story as fodder for Planned Parenthood, by a scandal ridden organization which is desperate to hold on to its taxpayer funding, to further mislead the public. Novelyn even adds that “if someone doesn’t understand what they do,” meaning Planned Parenthood, “then I tell my story.”

“If they’re defunded, a lot of people will lose their lives,” Novelyn claims in the video. “I’m a breast cancer survivor and I stand with Planned Parenthood.” The tragic irony is that Planned Parenthood isn’t a life-saving organization — but they love to present themselves that way. The truth, however, is that Planned Parenthood commits more abortions in the nation than any other organization, and taxpayer dollars are actually paying for abortions there, despite the group’s claims. But if we’re solely talking about cancer screenings, it cannot be repeated enough that Planned Parenthood has less than a 2 percent market share in such key services, making it very unlikely that anyone “will lose their lives” if Planned Parenthood is defunded. In fact, with its more than 320,000 abortions every year, defunding the organization would likely save lives.

Planned Parenthood is not in the healthcare business. It’s certainly not in the business of saving lives. It’s in the abortion business. Don’t let the propaganda fool you.

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