Media Matters
Just as David Daleiden predicted, Media Matters is continuing to attack Live Action’s credibility with the ferocity of an angry, rabid Chihuahua. Ironically, the strategy of these “watchdog” bloggers to churn out a lot of empty content is starting to backfire on them—if you flood the Internet with tons of illogical and spurious articles, eventually it becomes obvious to everyone that you’re either stupid or untrustworthy.
Media Matters’ latest attempt, categorized on their website as “research,” shows Lila Rose allegedly pushing the “falsehood” that abortion is a money maker for Planned Parenthood. They’re moving on to a different subject since the best they can do against Live Action’s latest undercover video is try to rewrite the history of Planned Parenthood’s scaremongering about its own defunding.
To prove their point that abortion is not a major revenue source for Planned Parenthood, they assert that:
Abortions Accounted For Approximately 16 Percent Of Planned Parenthood Of Indiana’s Total Revenue
According to Media Matters’ analysis:
- Planned Parenthood of Indiana performed 5,580 abortions in 2010. [Planned Parenthood of Indiana Annual Report, 2010]
- Planned Parenthood of Indiana’s total revenue in 2010 was $15,670,306. [Planned Parenthood of Indiana Annual Report, 2010]
- According to Live Action’s own figures, which Politifact-Florida deemed reasonable in this case, Planned Parenthood charges an average of $450 per abortion. [Politifact-Florida, 4/21/11]
- This means that Planned Parenthood of Indiana’s total revenue from abortion was approximately $2,511,000 or about 16 percent of its total revenue of $15,670,306
First of all, 16% isn’t a terribly small slice of the pie anyway. But that being said, a simple fact check reveals that their numbers are all wrong. If you go to PPIN’s 2010 annual report, you will find that annual revenue is indeed $15,670,306, but you will also realize that total revenue combines donations, government funding, miscellaneous sources, and patient services revenue. Patient services (revenue from the clinics themselves), which includes abortion, brings in $10,955,985 or 70% of PPIN’s total revenue.
This means that when abortions are properly compared to PPIN’s other services, they bring in 23% of the revenue from patients—substantially higher than the phony 16% statistic.
Media Matters is using the wrong statistic. They should be comparing abortion revenue to PPIN’s product output revenue, not their public and private donations. I want to know how much Media Matters is paying their “researchers” because their numbers are either laughably irrelevant or deliberately deceitful.
In the same article, Media Matters tries to demonstrate that abortion is an insignificant part of what Planned Parenthood does by showing that abortions account for 3.56% of total services. On the contrary, this statistic proves that abortion is their cash cow! When 3.56% of their services generates 23% of their product revenue, it is no wonder that Planned Parenthood defends abortion at all costs.
Even more damningly, Lila Rose pointed out in the Media Matters video clip that “Planned Parenthood has been increasing its share of the abortion market across our nation every single year.” This claim seems to be true of PPIN as well.
Using Media Matters’ own metric in arriving at the 3.56% of services statistic, I went back in time and looked at the abortion numbers since 2005. My findings are on the left.
Clearly, Planned Parenthood of Indiana has substantially increased its abortion numbers since 2005. The raw number of abortions committed has increased by 13% since 2005, and as a percentage of total services, abortion has increased by 21%!
And in all fairness, who can blame PPIN for these increases? Abortion is clearly the most lucrative part of their business and organizations, as a general rule, tend to do what pumps the most cash.
Again we see another example of Media Matters’ spin coming back to haunt them. If truthfulness is the measure of success in this match, the facts demonstrate that Lila Rose truly wins the day.
See past PPIN’s annual reports here: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009.
