According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), “The recipients of federal financial assistance are obligated to comply with various laws and regulations, including the requirements of four major civil rights laws: Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI) which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin; Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX), which bars discrimination based on sex in educational programs; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 504), which forbids discrimination based on a disability; and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, which bars discrimination based on age. Congress and federal courts have often treated these statutes as interrelated, as all four prohibit discrimination in federally funded programs.”
Federal agencies are supposed to enforce these requirements for federal funding recipients so that “federal aid is not used to support discrimination,” otherwise, “enforcement proceedings… can suspend or terminate assistance.”
Knowing all of this and given Planned Parenthood’s controversial and scandalous history as well as present-day accusations of racism against employees — why is this organization still receiving federal funding?
A long list of infractions
Despite years of complaints from staffers about discrimination, retaliation, abuse, and racism, the organization has committed nearly 6.4 million abortions since 2000 and has received a whopping $9.3 billion in taxpayer dollars.
Over the years, accusations of abuses, scandals, fraud, racism, pregnancy discrimination, privacy breaches, and Medicaid fraud have piled up against Planned Parenthood — yet the U.S. government under the Biden Administration continues to funnel millions in taxpayer dollars to the organization. The corporation disseminates unscientific, fabricated and misleading medical information to women considering abortions, and former staffers have revealed how Planned Parenthood misinforms women about the development of their preborn babies, how they have a poor standard of care for clients (with former managers accusing them of “treating women like cattle”), and how they utilize ultrasound only for abortions, not for informed consent purposes.
Accusations of systemic racism
Dr. Laverne Tolbert, who served on the board of Planned Parenthood NYC between 1975 and 1980, later told Newsmax TV, “There is no way to justify continuing to fund Planned Parenthood. Its roots are racist!” What Dr.Tolbert discovered would be repeated by many Planned Parenthood staffers who learned it wasn’t just PP’s roots that were racist.
2022: Concerns of antisemitism at Planned Parenthood are alleged in a discrimination lawsuit filed by Ilana Gamza-Machado de Souza, who is Jewish and formerly worked as Planned Parenthood’s Senior Brand Marketing Director in the Communications & Culture Department.
2021: A discrimination lawsuit was filed by former Planned Parenthood employee Nicole Moore, whose complaint laid out a damning case alleging Planned Parenthood “tokenized” staff of color and often retaliated against them when they spoke up. The 51-page lawsuit is replete with allegations of tokenism, mistreatment, and retaliation; it also alleges that Planned Parenthood “has not taken a single step to remedy the race discrimination which continues to harm its staff of color.”
“While Planned Parenthood has publicly boasted its commitment to racial equality, the organization – whose tagline is ‘Care. No matter what’ – has blatantly ignored reports by dozens of its Black employees of systemic unequal hiring and promotion, more work for lower pay, overt hostility, and trafficking in stereotypes by leadership,” Moore’s legal claim reads. “Instead of addressing the issues, Planned Parenthood has doubled down by punishing employees of color who dare to speak up, pretextually disciplining them and creating working conditions so intolerable that they are effectively forced to leave.”
Renee Bracey Sherman, a Black reproductive justice activist and former Planned Parenthood consultant who is mentioned in the suit, said she read the complaint and was not surprised by it. “I’ve experienced and been told stories similar to those outlined in the complaint. It’s hardly my first experience and I doubt it will be my last,” she told The Daily Beast. “I’m so tired of being quiet about racism in [the reproductive rights movement] for the sake of saving Roe. We lost Roe. Now we need to deal with the white supremacy and exploitation underlying our movement.”
Another Black abortion advocate told The Daily Beast, “They’ve been such a mess for so long, who can keep up? I’m glad she is suing.”
2021: Chris Charbonneau, CEO of a Seattle-based Planned Parenthood affiliate with nearly 40 years at the corporation, was fired after being accused of racism.
2020: In July 2020, hundreds of past and current Planned Parenthood of Greater New York (PPGNY) employees published an open letter which alleged the abortion organization was “founded by a racist, white woman” and had a “present steeped in white supremacy.” Additional employees at other affiliates told Buzzfeed News they had witnessed “open racism,” endured “segregated” offices, and experienced overall unequal treatment of Black and minority employees at multiple Planned Parenthood centers across the country. Planned Parenthood’s “systemic racism” was later acknowledged by multiple affiliates. Nineteen separate Planned Parenthood affiliates with operations in 33 states issued statements admitting PP’s racism. An internal audit also confirmed that Planned Parenthood Federation of America has a racism problem.
Employees claimed PPGNY, for example, put into place “a revenue-driven, assembly-line approach to PPGNY clinics – one that put patients, and in particular Black and other patients of color, at potential risk,” reported Live Action News.
According to Jezebel, PP’s affiliate CEO “floated an initiative to encourage the use of long-term contraceptives, like IUDs, in schools whose students were largely Black and Latinx.” That initiative was described as ‘white saviorism.’
“You’re talking about public schools where black and brown children are because they’re so hypersexual and need to be controlled?” Michelle Adams, Planned Parenthood’s customer service manager, said. “It’s a direct link to the history of forced sterilization.”
Planned Parenthood’s discriminatory actions were confirmed on social media.
Former staffer Kate Kelly tweeted: “This tracks w my experience working at Planned Parenthood. Deep, long-standing problems w treatment (dehumanization) of employees in general & POC employees in particular. At PP there was ZERO willingness to even budge.”
Kate Kelly on Planned Parenthood racism (Image: Twitter)
A Tweet from former staffer Amber J. Phillips read, “… I worked at @PPact on the @PPGenAction team and it was the most racist and toxic work environment I have ever experienced in my life…“
Amber Phillips on Planned Parenthood discrimination (Image: Twitter)
2016: Asia Blunt, a Black woman with a disability, filed a discrimination lawsuit claiming Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri fired her because of her race. Blunt claimed she “witnessed numerous instances of discriminatory and disparate treatment toward other African American employees, including in hiring, discipline, and termination.”
2005: Former Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (PPLA) staffer Andrew Jones filed a lawsuit which alleged that PPLA regularly allowed overt racism and sexism to infect its facilities, did nothing when one of its employees was called the N-word, and consistently portrayed Black males as being irresponsible. Sworn affidavits from female PPLA staff alleged, “there was a sense that any employee who was not a white female was going to be carefully watched.” Additional “high level PPLA employees … were fired for whistle-blowing or complaining of racism.”
Planned Parenthood LA former employees claimed racism lawsuit filed
2004: Life News reported that a group of Black and Hispanic employees filed a federal lawsuit alleging that they were treated in a racist manner by officials at a Planned Parenthood in southern California. One complaint from a Black employee accused a PPLA official of referring to him with a racial slur.
1999: Texas Business Today detailed a lawsuit filed by Lamarilyn Fadeyi, an African American employee who was fired by Planned Parenthood in Lubbock. Fadeyi alleged she had been “unlawfully discriminated against during her tenure with Planned Parenthood.” The article describes the allegations made by Fadeyi against Planned Parenthood, “including a claim that the office director gave her and another African American worker an ‘application’ to join the Ku Klux Klan (which was supposed to be a joke).”
Failure to comply with mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse
Live Action News has documented Planned Parenthood’s willingness to aid sex traffickers, willingness to commit sex-selective abortions, and much more. All of these should disqualify Planned Parenthood from receiving federal funding.
Live Action’s Aiding Abusers investigative report and docuseries, which includes actual criminal cases and testimony from the attorney of two victims, exposed how Planned Parenthood covers up child sexual abuse. In addition, Live Action undercover investigative videos documented Planned Parenthood employees at 15 different facilities showing a willingness to cover up child sexual abuse and child sex trafficking.
An interview between Live Action president Lila Rose and a former Planned Parenthood manager revealed that instead of helping employees to identify and report potential abuse, the corporation’s training sessions instructed staff on how to identify undercover journalists and whether they were being recorded.
Poor treatment of employees
Planned Parenthood employees have gone public to expose long-held secrets and inner workings of the organization, including failing to pay employees a decent wage, shoddy treatment, discriminating against pregnant employees, and prioritizing profits over care. They also revealed that Planned Parenthood has abortion goals. Staffers alleged the organization is “more concerned” with power and money than anything else and exposed the corporation’s ‘perpetually toxic’ culture.
In addition, Live Action News previously documented accusations of the corporation’s discrimination against its own staffers for:
- Violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)
- Violating the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
- Failure to accommodate disabilities
- Racial comments
- Sexual harassment
- Retaliation
- Identifying conflicts of interest
- Pregnancy discrimination (also here) and profit over care.
Shoddy ‘health care’
Lawsuits reveal that the quality of care provided is less than stellar. A lawsuit filed against Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, Inc. (PPSNE), a recipient of Title X funds, alleged a PPSNE midwife misdiagnosed a pregnancy that resulted in the death of a 22-week-old baby boy after telling the pregnant woman that she had miscarried at six weeks. Another alleges PPSNE failed to notice a client was 14 weeks pregnant before inserting an IUD. A third separate lawsuit alleges that a PPSNE abortionist left a woman permanently injured.
A separate lawsuit filed against Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic (PPHP) accused the organization of miscalculating a woman’s pregnancy so egregiously that she painfully delivered a “fully formed” 30 to 36-week baby boy into a toilet after Planned Parenthood’s abortionist allegedly told the woman she was just six (6) weeks along, then prescribed her abortion pills. Another lawsuit alleged that Planned Parenthood botched a client’s abortion and abandoned her afterwards, leaving her with weeks of pain and blood loss — and then, a premature delivery of her baby, who survived for an hour after birth though her mother was told she was stillborn.
Failure to protect patient confidentiality
Below are instances where Planned Parenthood has been careless with patient data, failing to protect the confidentiality of medical records and identifiable personal information:
- Planned Parenthood Bedford Heights was ordered to pay thousands by the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) for dumping private patient information in the trash, along with the remains of aborted children (2022). Planned Parenthood Los Angeles (PPLA) claimed a “hacking incident” affected 409,759 clients (2021). Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C. revealed a “hacking incident” affected 500 Planned Parenthood clients (2021).
- Planned Parenthood Great Plains posted a notice regarding a security breach at Blackbaud, a data management software and cloud computing software vendor of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and several affiliates, which “compromised some donor data” for multiple Planned Parenthood affiliates across the nation. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, a Title X recipient, was among the affiliates affected by the 2020 Blackbaud breach, which exposed patient data (2020).
- Planned Parenthood of the Heartland reported a privacy breach of 515 patients at its Bettendorf center in Iowa (2018). Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho (PPGWNI) notified patients about a data security “error” involving 10,700 patients patients (2016).
- Planned Parenthood of the Heartland closed its facility in Dubuque, Iowa, and left thousands of private medical records inside the building for months while the building was being shown and eventually sold. Planned Parenthood of the Heartland reported the breach, affecting 2,506 individuals, in July of 2016.
- Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region at PP Elizabeth Campbell Center in Cincinnati left a storage location that housed private prescription medical logs unlocked, which was later placed in the trash dumpster then emptied by the trash collector (2014).
- Planned Parenthood in Trexlertown, Pennsylvania, violated the Federal Standards for Privacy Identifiable Health Information after sending a bill for a patient to the wrong person, according to a complaint received by Office of Civil Rights (OCR) in 2014.
Live Action News has documented more here.
