Why did Senator Lisa Murkowski vote to make taxpayers support Alaska’s number one abortion provider?

Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are being lauded by Planned Parenthood after the two Republican lawmakers voted against a repeal of ObamaCare because they did not want to defund the abortion corporation for one year. Murkowski and Collins are now making the rounds, touting Planned Parenthood as a health organization that women cannot live without. This, however, is totally untrue. Federal health centers, which outnumber Planned Parenthood by the thousands nationally, offer a wide range of primary care services as well as services identical to those offered by Planned Parenthood – except abortion, which is not healthcare, as clearly seen in the video below, in which former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains the most common type of abortion procedure:

1st Trimester Surgical Abortion: Suction (Aspiration) D & C

These two Republican Senators are deceiving their constituents about the “services” Planned Parenthood provides while walking in lock step with the largest abortion chain in the United States.

In part one of this two-part series, we will examine Planned Parenthood’s services in Murkowski’s state of Alaska. In part two, we will scrutinize Planned Parenthood’s services in Maine and compare them to the claims of Senator Collins.

Senator Murkowski has spoken out of both sides of her mouth regarding Planned Parenthood for years. She once stated, “Taxpayer dollars should never be used to pay for abortions, but I will not vote to deny Alaskans access to the health services that Planned Parenthood provides.”

To Planned Parenthood’s benefit, Murkowski has kept that promise. In refusing to repeal ObamaCare, Murkowski has kept the nation’s largest abortion corporation funded to the tune of half a billion dollars annually. In doing this, she has also chosen to allocate vital health dollars away from more worthy federal health centers which offer a vast array of primary care services to women, men and children.

Live Action News has previously shown that Planned Parenthood has seen dramatic decreases in services like contraception, Pap tests, cancer screenings, and breast exams –  all while the organization’s government funding and abortions are increasing nationally.

And state trends are not so different from national numbers. In fact, Planned Parenthood is Alaska’s largest abortion provider. So how, in good conscience, can Senator Murkowski continually vote to keep taxpayer funding for the organization while ignoring this fact?

Here are some numbers from Murkowski’s state of Alaska:

Facilities 

Planned Parenthood operates just four centers in Alaska, yet there are 29 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) which provide services at 177 sites in Alaska, according to the Rural Health Info hub.

Patients

While Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands saw 79,532 patients in 2015 in the four states they oversee, federal health centers – listed under the Health Resources Services Administration’s website (HRSA) – saw 110,494 in Alaska alone.

When factoring in the additional three states (see numbers below) the federal health center numbers reveal how vast the federal program is compared to Planned Parenthood.

• Hawaii: 150,251

• Idaho: 166,336

• Washington: 971,099

A look at Planned Parenthood’s own website shows that in Alaska the organization claims to serve 7,295 clients for whom they provided the services such as:

• Contraception

• STI tests

• Cancer screenings

A media report claimed that just 4500 of Planned Parenthood’s clients in Alaska rely on Medicaid. That reduces the numbers drastically. Despite this, as previously pointed out, federal health centers cared for over 110,000 patients in 2015.

Contraception Care: 

An analysis conducted by Planned Parenthood’s former “special affiliate,” the Guttmacher Institute, which reviewed Planned Parenthood centers (PP), Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC), and Title X facilities for 2015 revealed:

• 5 out of 28 counties in Alaska which provided publicly funded contraception care had at least one Planned Parenthood.

• 27 counties had at least one FQHC site that provided contraception services.

• 23 counties had no Planned Parenthood centers.

• Slightly more than 3 percent (5 out of 157) of publicly funded family planning centers were operated by Planned Parenthood.

• PP served 19 percent of contraception clients while FQHC sites served 45 percent.

• In 4 of the 5 counties that had a Planned Parenthood, PP served fewer contraception clients than FQHC sites.

Cancer Screenings: 

While Planned Parenthood’s website claims the abortion corporation provided 2,667 cancer screenings in Alaska, a breakdown of clinical services published by HRSA shows that in 2015 alone, 43.3 percent (nearly 48,000) of the 110,494 patients served by federal health centers in the state received cervical cancer screenings there.

Abortions:

Planned Parenthood in Alaska is operated by Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands (PPGNHI), which runs centers in four states: Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, and Washington.

PPGNHI was formed in April of 2015 from a merger between Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest (PPGNW) and Planned Parenthood of Hawaii (PPHI).

In 2014, while cancer screenings made up just 8 percent of PPGNW’s services, abortions were 12 percent of the services PPGNW provided. In that same year (just prior to their merger) while PPHI’s abortion services totaled a whopping 21 percent, cancer screenings and annual exams at Planned Parenthood of Hawaii were just 5 percent of what it provided.

By 2015, the affiliate’s annual report showed that abortion made up 13 percent of services, while cancer screenings were 11 percent of services. The vast majority of the services provided were family planning at 48 percent and HIV testing and treatment at 26 percent. Pregnancy testing was only one percent of the services PPGNWHI provided. Government grants totaled 19 percent of the affiliate’s revenue.

Statistics published by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services Bureau of Vital Statistics show that in 2015, a total of 1,334 induced terminations were reported to the state. According to numbers made public in a recent lawsuit, Planned Parenthood committed 1,300 of those 1,334 abortions, making them the provider of 97 percent of all abortions in Alaska.

Tax Funded Abortions:

Live Action News has documented that Planned Parenthood abortionists in Alaska believe all abortions are “medically necessary,” thereby justifying the use of taxpayer funds to end the lives of preborn children in the state.

A recent call made by a Live Action investigator documented a Planned Parenthood staffer in Alaska coaching a prospective abortion patient as to how she could receive taxpayer-funded Medicaid to pay for her abortion.

Statistics published by the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services Bureau of Vital Statistics show that in 2015, 32.8 percent of the women who obtained abortions used Medicaid to pay for their abortions. In 2016, despite a decrease in the state’s abortions, those that were taxpayer-funded increased to 44.1 percent.

According to the Alaska Induced Termination of Pregnancy Statistics reports, which include the total number of abortions covered by Medicaid, state taxpayers paid $135,637 for abortions in 2015 and $153,208 in 2016.

The truth is that every day, senators like Murkowski and Collins stand in the way of Congressional efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, and that means the American people will be forced to continue giving $1.5 million each day to an abortion business which will continue to kill 900 innocent preborn children every day.