This week, the Trump administration officially announced cuts to Title X funding for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood. Under Title X, health care providers can get funding for family planning, but money for abortion is strictly prohibited. Trump’s new proposal would potentially strip Planned Parenthood of $60 million in Title X funding if the organization refuses to abide by the new regulations.
Title X provides taxpayer dollars for family planning, and the new regulations ensure that taxpayer money won’t be put towards abortion. Now, Title X organizations will not be allowed to refer women for abortions, must provide documentation proving they are complying with state laws regarding child abuse reporting, and must keep facilities that commit abortions completely separate from family planning facilities.
READ: As Planned Parenthood works to recruit ‘supporters,’ its healthcare plummets
Planned Parenthood has previously refused to stop committing abortions (many just like the one pictured above), and therefore, they run the risk of losing the $60 million in funding they currently enjoy. This had led to the predictable hand-wringing and hysteria from pro-abortion advocates, but the reality is, the organization doesn’t deserve that $60 million — or any taxpayer funding. Here’s why:
1. Planned Parenthood’s business is abortion.
Planned Parenthood repeatedly claims that abortion is only 3% of what it does. This, however, is not true, even according to the Washington Post, which is certainly not an anti-abortion newspaper. That figure is a product of fraudulent math, in which the corporation calculates all services that it provides equally — so it gives abortion the same weight as a pregnancy test, even though the abortion brings in significantly more money. This organization actually commits, according to its own annual reports, over 320,000 abortions every single year. That’s a third of all the abortions in the entire U.S. As Rich Lowry explained in the New York Post:
By Planned Parenthood’s math, a woman who gets an abortion but also a pregnancy test, an STD test and some contraceptives has received four services, and only 25 percent of them are abortion. This is a little like performing an abortion and giving a woman an aspirin, and saying only half of what you do is abortion.
Live Action also produced a video debunking this lie:
Yet the abortion profiteer and its defenders continue to claim that abortion is only a small part of what it does.
2. For women who want to give birth, Planned Parenthood offers practically no options.
Planned Parenthood’s name is rather ironic, considering the organization does next to nothing to help women actually plan for parenthood. If a woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy comes to Planned Parenthood, she can count on one thing: abortion. Even Planned Parenthood staffers joke about how their name is deceptive. An undercover Live Action investigation found that very few Planned Parenthood facilities provided prenatal care of any kind, despite advertising that they did. After the investigation began getting attention, Planned Parenthood scrubbed its website of its claims to provide prenatal care.
Women considering adoption likewise can’t count on this organization to help them; its adoption referrals are minuscule in comparison to its abortion services. Former Planned Parenthood staffers say that women who go there are discouraged from choosing any option other than abortion. It’s enough to make you wonder why “parenthood” is included in the title at all, as it seems the abortion profiteer wants to discourage women from being parents.
3. Planned Parenthood deceives the public about the services it provides.
Planned Parenthood claims that women are utterly reliant on them for health care — like mammograms. The organization and its supporters have repeatedly associated mammograms with the services the organization provides. But in reality, the organization’s centers don’t have the equipment to do mammograms. Live Action exposed that lie in a video that went viral:
Women can get manual breast exams at Planned Parenthood, but they must visit licensed radiology clinics for mammograms. Planned Parenthood lied, for years, about providing this life-saving service to women, likely in an attempt to further obscure the reality that abortion is the corporation’s number one priority.
4. Legitimate health care services at Planned Parenthood are plummeting.
Under the new Title X regulations, the $60 million that Planned Parenthood currently receives would be redirected to legitimate health care providers. Planned Parenthood repeatedly claims to be the nation’s foremost health care provider for women, but the reality is that it only serves a small percentage of women. The organization performs less than 1% of the nation’s breast exams, less than 3% of the nation’s Pap tests, and less than 2% of all cancer screenings. Over the years, the health care services the organization provides have steadily declined, while abortions have risen. Breast exams have dropped by over 60%, cancer screenings by over 68%, and Pap tests by 77%.
Meanwhile, this profitable corporation is vastly outnumbered by comprehensive health care clinics, which offer care to women with low incomes or no health insurance — without also committing abortions. Women will not have fewer options if Planned Parenthood were to disappear, by any means.
5. Planned Parenthood aids sexual abusers and traffickers.
One of the biggest problems Planned Parenthood will have with the Trump administration’s new Title X regulations is abiding by state laws mandating that health care facilities report any suspected sexual abuse. Why is this a problem for Planned Parenthood? Because it, evidently, is above the law, and repeatedly covers up the rape of children, as well as child sex trafficking.
Sadly, this behavior is not limited to Live Action’s undercover investigations. There are numerous real-life examples of Planned Parenthood looking the other way when a girl was brought to them by a trafficker or an abuser, accepting the money for the abortion and delivering the victim right back into the abuser’s hands.
That this corrupt organization will receive $60 million less in taxpayer funding is good, but it’s not enough. Altogether, the abortion conglomerate receives almost half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding every single year; $60 million is a drop in the bucket. It’s a good start, but the Trump administration cannot stop there. Planned Parenthood does not deserve a single cent of taxpayer funding, period.
