A Report on Planned Parenthood’s 2018 Midterm Election Efforts

Why does Planned Parenthood get MORE taxpayer funding every year while providing fewer services…for fewer clients…at fewer facilities? The answer: “Political money laundering.”

Planned Parenthood’s former president, Cecile Richards, once told the New York Times that her goal was to make Planned Parenthood “the largest kick-butt political organization.”

Not a healthcare organization. A political organization.

And every election cycle, Planned Parenthood’s political arms (including Planned Parenthood Votes, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Planned Parenthood Federal PAC) spend millions of dollars in campaign contributions, independent expenditures, and the recruitment of election workers to get proabortion politicians elected to office.

Those politicians, in turn, ensure that Planned Parenthood continues to receive over half a billion dollars in federal and state funding from taxpayers every year – almost 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s annual budget.  These politicians will also fight against the appointment of judges and certain administration officials who are pro-life. They’ll also fight restrictions on abortion, such as bans on dismemberment abortions and fetal pain legislation that prohibits abortions after 20 weeks.

In succeeding election cycles, Planned Parenthood’s political arms will, in turn, spend millions of dollars to help these politicians get re-elected and to defeat their pro-life challengers.

In the current 2018 midterm elections, Planned Parenthood’s affiliated political organizations will spend $20 million on their own and another $30 million in a consortium with other groups to defeat pro-life candidates and elect pro-abortion politicians to state and federal office to carry out its agenda.

At the federal level, Congress and the president have control of about $500 million in federal funding that goes to Planned Parenthood each year. This money comes primarily in the form of Medicaid reimbursements and Title X “family planning” grants. Below is all the federal funding going to Planned Parenthood (source: Charlotte Lozier Institute. Original data from U.S. Government Accountability Office).

In the 2018 midterm elections, Planned Parenthood’s affiliated political organizations will spend $20 million on their own and another $30 million in a consortium with three other groups to defeat pro-life candidates and elect pro-abortion politicians to state and federal office.

Planned Parenthood’s $20 million midterm spend: March.Vote.Win.

Planned Parenthood Votes and Planned Parenthood’s advocacy and political organizations announced in March 2018 the launch of a campaign to mobilize millions of voters ahead of the November elections.

Called March.Vote.Win., the effort is focused on Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin to influence several U.S. Senate, U.S. House, state attorneys general, and state legislature races.

This program is focused on direct voter contact methods like door-to-door canvassing, phone banking, and relational organizing, and it will also feature TV and digital ads.

CNN reported, “The targeted states are part of a two-for-one approach of prioritizing states with competitive races this fall for both Senate seats that could help Democrats keep Trump in check and governors’ offices that are crucial to the redistricting process after the 2020 Census.”

Deirdre Schifeling, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Votes, told CNN, “This is our last chance to flip some of those governors’ seats before redistricting.”

Fortune has reported that Planned Parenthood Votes is investing more than $4 million in 24 U.S. House races to attempt to flip the House to a Democrat pro-abortion majority.

Planned Parenthood has several PACs that belong to Planned Parenthood affiliates at the state and regional levels while Planned Parenthood’s largest national political organizations include Planned Parenthood Votes, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and Planned Parenthood Federal PAC:

• Planned Parenthood Votes makes independent expenditures for and against candidates. See the 2017-18 Federal Election Commission report on its Donors and Independent expenditures.
• Planned Parenthood Action Fund makes independent expenditures for and against candidates and funds grassroots organizing and election workers. See the 2017-18 Federal Election Commission report on its Independent expenditures.
• Planned Parenthood Federal PAC contributes directly to candidates’ campaigns. See the 2017-18 Federal Election Commission report on Donors and Campaign contributions.

In addition to March.Vote.Win., Planned Parenthood Votes is partnering with three other groups – Color of Change PAC, Center for Community Change Action, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – in the Win Justice Super PAC to invest a combined $30 million in key state and federal elections.

Win Justice is focused on mobilizing infrequent voters in three states: Florida, Michigan, and Nevada. It will seek to turn out 2.5 million ethnic minorities, women, and young people mainly through peer-to-peer texting, digital organizing, and training community leaders to knock on doors and mobilize voters in their communities.

Pro-abortion billionaire George Soros seeded the PAC with $3 million, and $1 million came from SEIU.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, “Win Justice PAC is additionally an approved organization of the Democracy Alliance, the left’s biggest secretive dark money liberal donor network that was cofounded by Soros.”

Through the $20 million March.Vote.Win., the $30 million partnership with the Win Justice coalition, and local Planned Parenthood advocacy and political organizations, the 2018 electoral program is intended to reach 4.5 million voters and make nearly three million door knocks.

While Planned Parenthood and its political arms are separate on paper, because taxpayers are forced to give the abortion chain over $500 million a year, donors are freed up to direct their money to Planned Parenthood’s political agenda rather than to fund what nominal health services Planned Parenthood itself provides.

But taxpayer dollars aren’t just allowing Planned Parenthood donors to divert $20 million and some portion of Win Justice’s $30 million to the midterms. According to its latest annual report, Planned Parenthood and its political arms were able to spend $160 million last year for “public policy” and “movement building” and to “promote health equity” and “engage communities” as well as another $85 million on fundraising.

Weaponizing the taxpayers’ own money against them

Planned Parenthood is in essence weaponizing the taxpayers’ own money against them, allowing its political arms to:

• lobby to increase Planned Parenthood’s annual federal funding;
• lobby to have taxpayers pay for abortions on demand by repealing the law prohibiting federal funding of abortions;
• lobby to repeal all restrictions on abortion, including restrictions on late-term abortions even into the ninth month of pregnancy (former president Cecile Richards told the Washington Post in 2016, “We need to challenge or repeal every single restriction that’s out there”);
• campaign to keep judges who are pro-life off the Supreme Court and federal courts;
• campaign against pro-life politicians and campaign to elect pro-abortion politicians; and
• run misleading ads and paid protests against pro-life appointments at the state and federal level.

Planned Parenthood (the “healthcare provider,” not its political arms) also recently announced that it is hiring a Judicial Nominations Director to ensure that only nominees who will uphold abortion laws and strike down abortion restrictions are appointed to the Supreme Court and lower courts. Despite its dwindling health services and customer base, Planned Parenthood is investing in the position. The responsibilities include in part, “interrogation of nominee’s personal and professional beliefs, associations, and memberships; as well as general opposition research in order to identify each nominee’s vulnerabilities” and developing advocacy campaigns for and against nominees.

At the same time Planned Parenthood’s political efforts try to ensure more and more taxpayer dollars keep flowing to it, many of Planned Parenthood’s services and its clients are declining. A look at the numbers shows that in the last 10 years of Planned Parenthood’s annual reporting (2006-2016),

• clients have decreased 23 percent (3.1 million in 2006 vs. 2.4 million in 2016);
• it closed 260 facilities (860 facilities in 2006 vs. 600 facilities in 2016);
• breast exams have decreased by 62 percent;
• cervical cancer screenings have decreased by 74 percent; and
• contraception services have decreased by 32 percent.

Yet while many services have decreased over the last 10 years, Planned Parenthood’s abortion numbers are up by 11 percent (to over 320,000 babies each year) and—shockingly—taxpayer funding has skyrocketed from $336 million to $543 million a year in 2016.

(Numbers above are from Planned Parenthood’s 2016-2017 annual report, 2006-2007 annual report, and 2006-2007 services numbers updated in the 2007-2008 annual report.)

Despite declining clients and health services, Planned Parenthood’s newly released plan for 2019 reveals the corporation’s continued obsession with abortion. The plan from both Planned Parenthood and its political arm, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, is “a multi-million dollar, nationwide effort” to “expand access to abortion in the United States.”

The plan says “Planned Parenthood is doubling down on where and what [abortion] services are offered to patients.”

One way it intends to increase abortion access — including in states that may outlaw abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned — is by offering abortion pills and instruction for their use via Internet video calls with abortionists.

While Planned Parenthood and its supporters continue to claim that the $500+ million it receives annually from taxpayers doesn’t pay for abortions, that funding clearly frees up other money to help in this effort to create more access to abortion — and to grow Planned Parenthood’s market share of the abortion business.

Planned Parenthood is also a business riddled with scandals and potential criminal activity:

• It lies about the services it claims to provide, including prenatal care and mammograms.
• It covers up sexual abuse and sex trafficking of children.
• It fails to report rape and abuse of minors in order to commit more abortions.
• It discriminates against girls, defending sex-selective abortions for people who would rather have baby boys.
• It’s under federal investigation after employees were caught on camera haggling over prices for the body parts of babies they aborted — making hundreds of dollars on each aborted child by selling their brains, livers, and legs piecemeal.
• It has overbilled taxpayers for millions of dollars in the Medicaid program.

Scandals and scams, decreasing services, and increasing abortions. Yet, Planned Parenthood demands more and more funding, and its supporters in Congress are always looking for ways to oblige.

The corrupt bargain between Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion politicians must end. Promises to defund Planned Parenthood of all taxpayer dollars must finally be fulfilled. American taxpayers should not be in the abortion business nor should they be subsidizing campaign contributions to corrupt politicians to keep them in office.

Taxpayers deserve better stewardship, women deserve better care, and innocent babies in the womb deserve to live.