Planned Parenthood likes to talk about how only 3% of their services are abortion.

A simple example of how they come to this calculation would be Planned Parenthood aborting 3 children and giving out 97 condoms. They would say that out of 100 services, 3 or 3% were abortion when in reality the significance and cost of the 3 abortions is much higher than 3% of their efforts.

Planned Parenthood’s accounting of 3% is misleading and not consistent with the rest of the business world. In college I interned at the airline manufacturer Boeing, which sells a lot of airplanes and also a lot of spare parts for those airplanes. For every airplane they sold for tens of millions of dollars, they also sold lots of spare parts for as little as 25 cents. By looking at TOTAL number of sales, you could conclude that 1% of their business was selling airplanes and 99% was spare parts, which is totally ridiculous. The reality was the value of the airplanes sales was close to 99% of their business and the spare parts 1%. Looking at the cost and effort of what is being offered is a much more accurate way to measure. Let’s apply this industry standard measure to Planned Parenthood:

THE TRUTH

All numbers are from the latest (2008) Planned Parenthood annual report:

• Annual abortions performed at Planned Parenthood: 305,310
• Average cost of abortion: $450 (This is based on what Planned Parenthood across the country has told Live Action staff, although it is slightly higher or lower depending on what part of the country it is.)
• Total income from abortions: $137,389,500
• Total health center income: $374,700,000

This means that fully 36.7% of Planned Parenthood health center income comes directly from aborting unborn children.

This is a far cry from the 3% number that they try to dupe the public with.  Doesn’t it say something that even Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion chain in America, tries to downplay their role in ending the lives of unborn children? Someone feeling a little guilty?