Top Planned Parenthood executive: Major government funds keep us in business

A former top executive for Planned Parenthood once admitted that the abortion corporation’s success is linked to power and money, and that taxpayer dollars enabled the abortion corporation to recruit, hire and pay their top staffers six-digit salaries — all while actual health services and patients declined.

For years, pro-life groups have documented that the hundreds of millions in government dollars Planned Parenthood receives are fungible, acting to free up other dollars which would normally be used for salaries, facility rent, and general overhead. Though Planned Parenthood leads the American public to believe that those taxpayer funds do not pay for abortions or the salaries of staff that commits abortions, top officials at Planned Parenthood, like R. James LeFevre, Jr., knew differently.

LeFevre began his career with Planned Parenthood in 1974 and was considered a mover and shaker inside the organization.

According to his resume, LeFevre worked as Chief Strategic Officer for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) from 1999-2006, as PPFA’s Chief Operating Officer from 1996-1999, as interim co-president of PPFA from 1995-1996, and as executive director of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England from 1977-1995. In other words, he was not a low-level employee, but was heavily involved in the workings of Planned Parenthood as an organization.

In 1992, he authored a booklet called “Redirecting Boards, a New Vision of Governance for Planned Parenthood,” written as a reference for the various PPFA affiliate leaders.

It is there that LeFevre exposed how “the major influx of government funds” became the catalyst behind Planned Parenthood’s ability to recruit its staff. LeFevre writes:

Some 20 years ago the managerial “professionalism” of the executive director (and often the senior staff) began to emerge. This became possible because of the major influx of government funds (primarily federal), providing resources that enabled Planned Parenthood to offer extensive training to incumbents and to hire experienced managers (not just social workers, ministers, or nurses, who did not always have such managerial preparation or experience). This trend continued for other senior staff positions….

In other words, the ability for PPFA to hire top notch staff, executives and board members was directly related to public taxpayer funds.

LeFevre would know. After all, in addition to his many jobs within the abortion corporation, Live Action News previously reported that LeFevre was one of the nine members of PPFA’s “Reinvention Group,” tasked to “literally design PPFA in order to succeed in the era of health care reform.” Or, as the New York Times described it at the time, to change Planned Parenthood to a “broad health organization that could compete in the era of managed care.” But, despite today’s misleading rhetoric, this so-called “reinvention plan” created in the mid 1990’s to morph Planned Parenthood from an abortion facility into a health care agency failed because it barely mentioned abortion.

 

Live Action News has documented that Planned Parenthood is all about abortion and political organizing, but the scheme to masquerade as a health care organization continues to this day and has made Planned Parenthood executives very wealthy. According to Planned Parenthood’s annual reports, between 1997 and 2004, taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood increased over 65 percent from $165 million (1997) to $272.7 million (2004). Within those same years, abortions also increased a staggering 54 percent from 165,174 to 255,015.

What else increased during that same time period? The salary of PPFA’s president, Gloria Feldt.

In 1997, PPFA paid Feldt $245,853, plus $25,000 in expense account and other allowances. By 1999 (just two years later), Feldt was compensated $324,217 plus $16,938 in employee benefits and an additional $68,000 in expense account and other allowances.

Feldt’s salary increased each year by the amounts listed below (all categories totaled):

• 2000- $24,000 increase
• 2001 – $14,000 increase
• 2002 – $12,000 increase
• 2003- $29,000 increase

By 2004, the last year Feldt was employed by Planned Parenthood, her salary from PPFA skyrocketed to over $902,148 ($490,679 in compensation, $346,570 in employee benefits and an additional $64,899 in expense account and other allowances).

In other words, within just a few years, and with the help of government dollars, the president of Planned Parenthood had received a whopping 233 percent increase in her salary.

Enter Cecile Richards, whose “accomplishments” mirror those of Feldt. In 2006, when PPFA hired Richards to be their CEO/political organizer,  government dollars to the abortion corporation jumped from $336.7 million (2006) to $554.6 million (2015), also increasing nearly 65 percent.

Since Richards was hired to the organization’s CEO position, abortions rose from 289,750 to 328,348.

Thanks to Richards, Planned Parenthood now garners nearly 35 percent of the abortion market, while the organization’s actual health services and patient numbers are dwindling. But that hasn’t prevented Richards from seeing her salary increase. Richards began her career at Planned Parenthood receiving an annual compensation of $360,902, according to PPFA’s 990 reports that year. And, just like her predecessor, her salary also skyrocketed.

While abortions remained on the increase along with taxpayer dollars, Cecile Richard’s salary rose by over 165 percent. According to PPFA’s IRS Form 990 for 2014, in just a few years, Richards’ salary and compensation had reached a staggering $957,952.

Richards isn’t the only one cashing in on taxpayer dollars.

An analysis by American Life League (ALL) in 2017 examined compensation paid to Planned Parenthood’s 12 top employees and found they received a total of $4.7 million. The report also found that the average compensation of an affiliate CEO had increased 22 percent in just the last two years.

In addition, ALL found that all 56 PP affiliate CEOs made over $100,000 per year with some making more:

• 33 make over $200,000 a year
• 16 make over $300,000 a year
• 6 make over $400,00 a year
• 1 makes in excess of $500,000 a year

“The total compensation paid to all PP CEOs is $13.4 million. This income puts the average Planned Parenthood CEO in the top five percent of all workers in the United States,” ALL wrote in its press release.

A look at Planned Parenthood’s record reveals that it doesn’t deserve a cent of taxpayer money:

• Documented evidence that women do not need Planned Parenthood for contraceptive services
• Documented evidence that Planned Parenthood is losing patients
• Documented evidence that services at Planned Parenthood are decreasing, despite an increase in abortions and government funding
• Documented evidence dispelling Planned Parenthood’s 3% abortion myth
• Documented evidence that Planned Parenthood lies about the services it provides, including prenatal care
• Documented evidence that Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms, despite claiming that it did
• Documented evidence that funding Planned Parenthood also funds its abortion facilities
• Documented evidence that Planned Parenthood has abortion quotas
• Documented evidence that abortion is the primary service that tax-funded Planned Parenthood offers pregnant women because, as a former worker testified, “they made their money if somebody had an abortion”
• Documented evidence regarding the poor standard of care Planned Parenthood gives to their clients, with former Planned Parenthood managers accusing Planned Parenthood of “treating women like cattle” and using ultrasounds only for abortions
• Documented evidence that Planned Parenthood is misinforming women about the development of their babies
• Documented evidence that Planned Parenthood was a eugenics-based organization at the time of its founding
• Documented evidence that Planned Parenthood has been cited for overbilling abuses and Medicaid fraud, and for violating patient privacy
• Documented evidence that Planned Parenthood is failing to report child sexual abuse (a violation that alone should result in the organization losing millions of taxpayer dollars granted to it under the federal Title X Family Planning Program)
• Documented evidence on the kind of sex “education” the abortion corporation is giving to teens, with Planned Parenthood promoting BDSM and other disturbing sexual practices to teenagers

The list above does not include the number of women injured or killed after using Planned Parenthood’s abortion “services.”

So, while taxpayers are forced to fund this corrupt organization to end the lives of over 900 preborn babies a day, Planned Parenthood has increased its excess revenues (that’s right: profit) from $55.8 million in 2005 to a whopping $77.5 million last year alone all while paying its executives, especially its CEO, extremely high salaries.

It was all a part of the plan, as LeFevre outlined in his book where he noted, “In the last decade it has become abundantly clear that Planned Parenthood’s success is closely linked with power and money… it takes political muscle and big bucks to prevail.”

Sadly, many of those big bucks come from the taxpayer. Enough is enough. A full defunding of America’s corrupt abortion corporation is imperative.