Pro-abortion media: ‘Subsidize Planned Parenthood instead of children’s births’

Politico Nightly is flaunting a 2015 report, claiming that it proves that defunding Planned Parenthood would cost the taxpayer 130 million additional dollars over the course of ten years because, according to the media outlet, “subsidizing birth control is far cheaper than subsidizing births.”

The truth is that there are many legitimate health care clinics that do not end the lives of preborn children.

“Subsidizing birth control far cheaper than subsidizing births”

The Politico Nightly report entitled “The DOGE plan that could cost millions” began, “President-elect Donald Trump’s close allies are sharpening their knives, eager to carve up the federal budget when they take power in January. And while much of what they will target for elimination remains a mystery, the shrink-the-government brigade has openly taken up a longstanding battle cry of social conservatives: defunding Planned Parenthood.”

It continued, “Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-leaders of the vaguely defined ‘Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE]’ that will be recommending cuts to the Trump administration, wrote in a November op-ed that they will ‘help end federal overspending by taking aim at’ an array of programs, and specifically called out ‘nearly $300 million [going] to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.’

“But the last time there was a concerted push on Capitol Hill to strip funding from Planned Parenthood, the Congressional Budget Office [CBO] calculated that doing so would actually cost the government more than it saved — $130 million over 10 years to be exact.”

Note that the CBO report is dated September 2015.

“CBO found that eliminating the taxpayer dollars the group receives through Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Title X family planning program — none of which can be used for abortions under longstanding federal law — would save about $520 million over a decade, but cost about $650 million,” Politico Nightly said.

“That’s because ‘as much as 25 percent of the estimated 2.6 million clients served by Planned Parenthood would face reduced access to care,’ the nonpartisan office said, particularly ‘services that help women avert pregnancies,’ meaning ‘the number of births in the Medicaid program would increase by several thousand per year,'” they claimed.

And here is the kicker, that the report allegedly pointed to (emphases added):

“Essentially, subsidizing birth control is far cheaper than subsidizing births, so the cost of funding Planned Parenthood would be passed on — and surpassed — by the increased cost of funding Medicaid. CBO found that the Planned Parenthood patients who would be most affected by the cuts ‘reside in areas without access to other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations,'” Politico Nightly shamefully added.

CBO may have claimed that Planned Parenthood boasted 2.6 million clients in 2015 but its annual report showed far less. And, as Live Action News has documented year after year, clients, facilities, and services have decreased at the abortion corporation, while abortion, taxpayer funding, and “profit” have skyrocketed.

What the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found

On September 16, 2015, in response to proposed legislation to defund Planned Parenthood, a CBO analysis found that Planned Parenthood received approximately $450 million annually in federal funding alone.

CBO broke the estimated $450 million in federal funding down to two main sources — Medicaid and Title X:

• $390 million is provided to Planned Parenthood through the Medicaid program and less than $1 million is provided through the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Medicare program combined.
• Approximately $60 million is provided through the National Family Planning Program, which operates under Title X of the Public Health Service Act (commonly referred to as Title X).

Interestingly, as Live Action News previously reported, the 2015 CBO analysis stated, “CBO estimates that the bill would not affect spending subject to appropriations because any discretionary grants, such as those made under Title X, that might otherwise have gone to Planned Parenthood would be awarded to other health clinics or medical practitioners.”

A September 22, 2015, CBO analysis made at the request of the House Majority Leader at the time “estimated the effect on direct spending of legislation that would permanently prohibit Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funds.”

That report assessed that “implementing such a bill would increase direct spending by $130 million over the 2016-2025 period. The difference in the estimated costs reflects the different time periods over which use of federal funds would be prohibited.”

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Despite claims made by pro-abortion media allies of Planned Parenthood, the CBO’s assessment of potential cost increases was caveated by writing, “Under both policies the effects of the legislation on federal spending are highly uncertain and would depend largely on the extent to which individuals who otherwise would obtain Medicaid-funded services from Planned Parenthood would either:

• Continue to obtain services from Planned Parenthood without Medicaid reimbursement;
• Obtain services from other health clinics and medical practitioners that receive Medicaid reimbursement; or,
• No longer obtain such services.”

In addition to the CBO report, a 2015 House Committee on Oversight and Accountability found that:

• Planned Parenthood does not need federal subsidies.
• A significant number of Planned Parenthood executives earn in excess of $200,000 annually
• Planned Parenthood spends millions on travel, galas, and real estate.
• Taxpayer dollars subsidize Planned Parenthood’s political affiliates.
• Numerous alternatives to Planned Parenthood exist.

Women have alternatives 

The media report claimed that if Planned Parenthood were somehow defunded, women, many of whom would be considered low-income, would have few alternatives. However, the CBO analysis was clear that the number of low-income women was ‘uncertain,’ writing that “[t]he people most likely to experience reduced access to care would probably reside in areas without access to other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations. However, how many Medicaid beneficiaries served by Planned Parenthood live in such areas is uncertain,” the CBO wrote.

The fact is that Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) offer multiple services for both men and women while remaining free of the controversy of abortion. In addition, while FQHC location sites and patients served have increased over the years, Planned Parenthood’s clients and essential health services have essentially decreased, with the exception of abortion.

In its 2015-16 annual report, Planned Parenthood claimed, “When extreme politicians vow to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood, they are talking about cutting off at least 1.5 million Planned Parenthood patients who rely on these programs to access preventive care from their provider of choice.

“In 2015, 2.4 million people relied on approximately 650 Planned Parenthood health centers for affordable, high-quality reproductive health services.”

This means CBO’s claim that taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood assisted 2.6 million customers was a gross overstatement.

But let’s review the numbers.

In its 2006-07 annual report, Planned Parenthood boasted seeing “3.1 million women, men, and teens.” And year after year the number of clients it saw decreased. In 2009 Planned Parenthood reported seeing 3 million clients. That number dropped to 2.4 million clients and remained steady in the years 2015, 2016, 2017 2018, and 2019.

In 2020, clients served at Planned Parenthood dwindled further to 2.16 million before decreasing to 2.13 million in 2021 and 2.05 million reported in its most current 2022-23 report.

In other words, clients at Planned Parenthood have decreased nearly 15% from the 2.4 million clients it reported in its 2015-16 annual report to the 2.05 million clients in the 2022-23 annual report. But since 2006 (when it reported 3.1M clients), Planned Parenthood’s clients have decreased by nearly 34%.

In 2022, Planned Parenthood reported that “men make up 13% of Planned Parenthood’s patients…” This means it is likely that out of the 2.05 million clients Planned Parenthood recorded in their 2022-23 report, an estimated 1.8 million were women.

Comparing FQHC’s to Planned Parenthood, Live Action News found that:

• Locations: FQHCs had 15,000 location sites in 2023, up from the 14,000 sites in 2022. In contrast, while Planned Parenthood reported 650 centers in their 2015-16 annual report there were only 600 Planned Parenthood facilities reported in both 2022 and 2023. Today, FQHCs offer 25 times as many location sites as Planned Parenthood.
• Clients: FQHCs served 31.2 million patients in 2023 (17.9 million were female) up from the 30.5 million patients served in 2022 (17.5 million were female). In contrast, Planned Parenthood clients dropped from 2.4 million in 2014 to 2.05 million in 2023. Today, FQHCs therefore served over 15 times as many men and women and nearly 10 times as many women as Planned Parenthood in 2023.
• Prenatal Care: FQHCs served 585,135 prenatal care patients in 2023 up from the almost 560,000 they served in 2022. In contrast, Planned Parenthood recorded 9,419 prenatal care visits in its 2015-16 annual report but decreased to 6,316 prenatal services recorded in the 2022-23 annual report. FQHCs served nearly 93 times as many prenatal care patients as Planned Parenthood in 2023.
• Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening: FQHCs tested nearly 4.3 million females for cervical cancer, carried out nearly 1.9 million pap tests, and tested over 1.6 million women with mammograms in 2023, up from testing 4.08 million females for cervical cancer, carrying out 1.8 million pap tests, and screening 1.7 million patients with mammograms in 2022. In its 2015-16 annual report, Planned Parenthood’s overall cancer screenings (pap tests and breast exams, since it doesn’t offer mammograms) totaled 665,234, but that decreased to 470,419 in 2021-22 and declined again to 464,021 in 2022-23. In fact, total cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood have dropped nearly 79% from a high of over 2.1 million in 2004.

In addition, in the past decade, contraceptive services at Planned Parenthood have decreased nearly 40%, from 3.7 million recorded in 2012-2013 to 2.2 million recorded in 2022-202.

Yet, in 2023, FQHCs provided nearly 3 million “contraceptive management” services to clients all over the United States.

As Taxpayer Dollars Rose, Abortions Skyrocketed

The Hyde Amendment is a pro-life rider that prevents federal taxpayer dollars from funding most abortions. Ironically, the abortion industry — which is historically saturated in racist eugenics by its own admissions — has pushed the false claim that because Hyde does not allow taxpayer money to fund the abortions of underprivileged women (many of them minority women) for any and every reason, it is “racist.” The truth is the exact opposite. The Hyde Amendment protects poor and minority women (and their children) from being pushed toward abortion.

Despite the abortion lobby’s claims that poor women need the public to pay for their abortions, they know full well that statistics show that when abortion is subsidized by taxpayers, abortions increase. This means the abortion industry stands to gain financially should its friends in Congress succeed in doing away with Hyde. A survey published by Guttmacher in 2017 revealed that women who have taxpayer-funded abortions tend to have more abortions.

Whether federal taxpayer dollars pay directly for an abortion or not, the money is fungible and can fund staff and location sites also used to commit abortions. Perhaps this is why many pro-life advocates find it ironic that as taxpayer funding has increased, abortions at Planned Parenthood have skyrocketed.

Abortions rose nearly 20% (19.60%) between 2015 and the current year when the organization committed the highest number of abortions on record. In that same timeframe, taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood rose nearly 30% (29.35%).

In the past decade (from 2012-2013 to 2022-2023), as taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood rose over 29%, from $540.6 million to nearly $700 million, Planned Parenthood abortions also increased over 20%, from 327,166 to 392,715 — the highest number of abortions reported by the corporation.

Meanwhile, healthcare services at Planned Parenthood also decreased over the past decade:

• Total services decreased over 16%, from 10.9 million to 9.1 million.
• Clients decreased by 30%, from 3 million to 2.1 million.
• Facilities decreased by 25%, from 800 to 600.
• Donors decreased nearly 14%, from 669,000 to 576,000.
• Prenatal care decreased a whopping 68%, from 19,506 prenatal services to just 6,316.
• Contraceptive services decreased nearly 40%, from 3.7 million to 2.2 million.
• Cancer screenings and prevention services plummeted nearly 59%, from 1.1 million to just over 464,000.
• Breast care (not including mammograms, which Planned Parenthood does not perform) dropped nearly 62%, from 549,804 to 212,655.
• Pap tests decreased nearly 60%, from 492,365 to 197,617.
• Adoption referrals decreased nearly 22%, from 2,197 to 1,721.

Proof of abuses, scandals, fraud, racism, pregnancy discrimination, privacy breaches, as well as Medicaid fraud, and even accusations of retaliation have piled up against the nation’s number one abortion business, Planned Parenthood. Despite these claims, the U.S. government has continued to funnel millions in taxpayer dollars to the organization, leaving them rolling in money.

Over the past 10 years, excess revenue over spending (profit) at the abortion corporation ballooned from $58.2 million to $178.6 million — an increase of nearly 207%.

In its most recent annual report for 2022-23, Planned Parenthood boasted a “year of moving mountains,” with abortions climbing to a record high (392,715 abortions), while clients decreased — and taxpayer funding hit nearly $700 million. In just the past decade, Planned Parenthood has committed about 3.8 million abortions while receiving over $6.5 billion in taxpayer funding.

Planned Parenthood currently holds 40% of the U.S. abortion market share; 70% of the abortions it commits are done by abortion pill (nearly 275,000 sales estimated yearly).

Today, Planned Parenthood abortions average 1,076 every day, nearly 45 every hour, and one every 80 seconds. It should be immediately defunded.

Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:

Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!