Planned Parenthood has been caught in plenty of illegal acts that prove the organization is all about the bottom line. From Medicaid fraud to negotiating pricing for fetal body parts, there seems to be nothing off limits for Planned Parenthood as a way to make money, except for actually caring for women.
For a company that has built an empire off of women’s bodies, Planned Parenthood does very little to actually help women, though they do a very good job of spinning the facts. The puppet masters at Planned Parenthood don’t care about women, and they prove it every day.
1. Protecting Rapists. Despite the fact that all 50 states have mandatory laws requiring facilities like Planned Parenthood to report even the suspicion of rape, Planned Parenthood has failed women and girls by failing to alert authorities.
By not reporting the possibility of rape or incest in at least 15 known cases, Planned Parenthood stood to make more money. Girls were brought in by abusive step-fathers, coaches, foster siblings, fathers, kidnappers, and older boyfriends for abortions, and Planned Parenthood collected the money, committed the abortions, and took additional money for birth control, knowing that if these victims became pregnant again, their abusers would bring them back to Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood didn’t follow parental notification laws — which would have allowed the abuse to be discovered, and staff didn’t alert authorities even when directly told about the abuse. In one case, when a mother discovered the abuse and brought her daughter to Planned Parenthood, she was told by staff that it was too much of a “hassle” to report it. In other instances, families sued Planned Parenthood for failing to protect their children and allowing the abuse to continue. This is a shameful disservice to those girls, women, and their children, and proves that Planned Parenthood’s care and concern stops when the abortion check has cleared.
Undercover investigations by Live Action further prove this.
2. Lying about Prenatal Development. Planned Parenthood believes it can get away with lying to the women in its targeted market. Even founder Margaret Sanger thought little of the women she was marketing birth control to, referring to them as “feeble-minded.” This mistreatment and disrespect of women continues today, as Planned Parenthood needs to keep women and girls in the dark about prenatal development to continue pulling in profits and paychecks. Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards makes nearly a million dollars a year.
In order to reach abortion quotas and make more money, a Wisconsin Planned Parenthood staff member was caught lying to a woman who was reportedly six to eight weeks pregnant, telling her the preborn child had “no arms, no legs, no heart, no head, no brain.” She said it was simply “fetal matter” and spoke poorly of adoption, telling the patient to have an abortion as soon as possible. This staff member is just one of many who has lied to women about the development of their babies.
Former Planned Parenthood worker Catherine Anthony Adair told of her experience in The Washington Examiner:
In fact, clinic workers would purposefully avoid providing information on fetal development, what the child looked like, the child’s anatomical development and the pain he or she could feel. I was continuously reminded that when referring to the baby, the appropriate terminology was ‘clump of cells’ or ‘contents of the uterus.’
Planned Parenthood’s mission is to pressure as many women into having an abortion as it can. Those in charge know that can’t be accomplished if they refer to the child as a ‘baby.’
3. Failing to Provide Basic Health Care. In addition to lying to women, Planned Parenthood has convinced the media and countless Americans that it provides health care services that women can’t get elsewhere.
CEO Cecile Richards managed to convince thousands of people — including President Barack Obama — that Planned Parenthood facilities performed mammograms to check women for cancer. The truth eventually came out, from Richards herself, that Planned Parenthood doesn’t even have mammogram machines. Live Action investigated and discovered that it was all a sham; no woman had ever received a mammogram from Planned Parenthood.
A similar situation unfolded regarding prenatal care. When threatened with the possible loss of federal funding, Richards tried to strike back by announcing that taking taxpayer money from Planned Parenthood would leave women without prenatal care. Her lies were uncovered when Live Action investigated. 97 Planned Parenthood facilities across the country were contacted by women inquiring about prenatal care. 92 of those admitted they do not provide any prenatal services. Women aren’t even able to receive ultrasounds unless they intend to abort their babies.
In addition to lying about services it doesn’t provide, the number of actual health services Planned Parenthood provides to women has been in a steady decline while its abortion totals continue to rise. The organization’s annual report shows that contraception services at Planned Parenthood have dropped nearly 30 percent since 2009. Planned Parenthood performs just .97 percent of the nation’s PAP tests and only 1.8 percent of breast exams. Meanwhile, the organization provides over 34 percent of the country’s abortions.
4. Aiding Child Sex Traffickers. An undercover Live Action investigation exposed Planned Parenthood workers’ willingness to assist child sex traffickers in obtaining birth control and abortion for the girls they had kidnapped into sex slavery. The average age a girl enters into prostitution is 13, and Planned Parenthood commits abortions on many of them. Instead of calling authorities, Planned Parenthood staffers at seven locations offered advice to the pimps.
“If they’re a minor, just tell them to put down that they’re students. For the most part, we want as little information as possible,” manager Amy Woodruff, LPN, of Planned Parenthood Central New Jersey’s Perth Amboy center advised a pimp and his prostitute.
In addition to the undercover videos, Planned Parenthood’s catering to sex traffickers was exposed in a report published by the Annals of Health Law in 2014 entitled, Health Consequences of Sex Trafficking. The report notes that survivors had “significant contact with clinical treatment facilities, most notably Planned Parenthood.” One trafficking victim is quoted in the report as saying that the pimps took her to Planned Parenthood because Planned Parenthood “didn’t ask questions.” Other victims said they were under constant pressure to abort and were often brought to abortion facilities against their will. Planned Parenthood had the power to save these girls, but they chose money instead.
5. Fighting Regulations and Laws. Planned Parenthood claims that placing safety regulations on its facilities is ‘anti-woman’. The truth is that safety regulations and laws have the potential to shut down facilities that break rules set in place to protect women. Planned Parenthood consistently fights back against parental notification laws that would inform a parent of a child’s attempt to receive an abortion. Parental notification laws are important so that parents can be aware of a child’s health situation should they suffer any complications from the abortion, including possible post-abortion emotional trauma. These laws also matter in helping to catch child rapists.
In addition, Planned Parenthood fights against informed consent laws, such as the booklet the Texas Department of Health created for women seeking abortions. It informed women of the risks of both abortion and childbirth and had a detailed overview of all of the legal options including childbirth, abortion, and adoption. While it stated that women had to make their own decisions, Planned Parenthood fought it because it interfered with the organization’s desire to keep women in the dark.
Planned Parenthood also fights against health regulations like hospital admitting privileges. The organization filed a 2013 federal lawsuit against Alabama, challenging the Women’s Health and Safety Act which would ensure that Planned Parenthood facilities adhere to the same standards as ambulatory surgical centers, and the abortionist would have admitting privileges at the local hospital in case of emergencies. Planned Parenthood, though it commits dangerous surgery on women, doesn’t want to have those safety standards in place because it would have to upgrade facilities to ensure women’s safety.
The organization has also tried to stop laws that would protect children from being aborted for being the wrong sex (sex-selective abortions). Planned Parenthood is also against laws that would stop the discriminatory abortions of children because of a prenatal diagnosis.
Lastly, Planned Parenthood is against laws protecting children born alive during abortions. If these children are protected by law, more people will begin to see how often viable children are killed through abortion, and that could mean a big hit to Planned Parenthood’s piggy bank. In 2013, Planned Parenthood fought against a law requiring abortionists to give lifesaving medical care to an infant born alive during a botched abortion. Florida Representative Mike Clelland, a pro-choice Democrat, asked the Planned Parenthood lobbyist, “Does Planned Parenthood have an objection to a doctor being obligated to provide advanced life support in an abortion clinic setting to a child born alive? I mean, I guess you do or you wouldn’t be here, right?” He continued, “What objection could you possibly have to obligate a doctor to transport a child born alive to a hospital where it seems to me they would be most likely to be able to survive?” Planned Parenthood eventually backed off.
As the truth regarding Planned Parenthood’s motives unfolds it will become harder to maintain its current celebrity status. Undercover investigations and lawsuits filed by Planned Parenthood’s own clients and former staff members continue to expose the realities of its agenda: making money off of the bodies of women and their children under the guise of freedom.
