Live Action has launched its newest investigation, exposing how Planned Parenthood neglects women’s health care in favor of abortion.
Over the next weeks, Abortion Corporation will show that, far from being the nation’s foremost health care provider for women (as their marketing would have you believe), Planned Parenthood is focused on one thing: abortion. Pretending to be a health care provider is the only way Planned Parenthood is able to receive taxpayer funding, though, so they continue to keep up the pretense. (Historically, Planned Parenthood has been good at pretending…including its false claim of providing mammograms that had to be walked back, detailed here.)
One of the claims that Planned Parenthood continually makes is that they do not solely provide abortion for pregnant women; they also provide prenatal services. Live Action investigators put this to the test: they contacted 99 Planned Parenthood facilities across the country, requesting prenatal services, and were denied at all but five. On the phone calls, counselors repeatedly state that the only service they provide for pregnant women is abortion, and several joke about how the name “Planned Parenthood” is deceptive.
Interestingly, one of the counselors recommended that the Live Action investigator go to Care Net if she wants prenatal care. Why? Because Care Net actually cares for women throughout pregnancy, providing them with or pointing them to medical care, actual support, and practical help. Planned Parenthood likely doesn’t realize it, but this is exactly why Planned Parenthood must be defunded — so that the taxpayer dollars meant to be helping low-income women receive health care can be reallocated to clinics that do provide health care. In his article, “Even Planned Parenthood Knows Where to Send Women Who Need Help,” Care Net’s Vincent Di Caro wrote:
We can only hope that as more is uncovered regarding the true nature of Planned Parenthood’s operations, the more the public will learn about compassionate alternatives offered by those that are interested in women’s well-being, not their wallets.
The truth is simple: Planned Parenthood provides only a tiny percentage of U.S. women’s health care. They perform less than 1% of all pap tests, less than 2% of all cancer screenings, and zero mammograms. Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is outnumbered by comprehensive health care clinics all across the nation by an astounding 20 to 1.
Low-income Americans have plenty of options for health care — the health care that Planned Parenthood does not provide. Pregnancy resource centers, including Care Net, aside, there are currently over 1,100 Federally Qualified Health Clinics (FQHCs) at over 6,000 sites across the country, and they provide comprehensive health care to all people, regardless of their ability to pay. In 2013 alone, they served over 21 million Americans. There are also over 9,000 community health care centers for Americans who need to obtain medical services there.
Why are we funding Planned Parenthood when they provide so very little real health care and when their focus is so clearly on abortion? Why do we fund Planned Parenthood when we could be directing taxpayer funds to comprehensive health clinics that actually provide health care — including clinics that Planned Parenthood itself directs women towards?
