Each time Congress debates whether to defund Planned Parenthood, the inevitable refrain from the group’s supporters is that the money it receives from taxpayers doesn’t pay for abortions and that, besides, abortion makes up just 3 percent of its services. The group’s leaders saturate the media with their claim that their 700 clinics offer women and families “a range of health services.”
But an abortion is nothing like a breast exam, which Planned Parenthood clinics offer, or a mammogram, which they do not (though its supporters often claim they do). An abortion is much more serious and consequential. Unlike those other services, it is not meant to protect or enhance life, but rather to destroy it.
Yet Planned Parenthood’s arguments have always had the intended effect. It has received federal funds continuously since 1970 in amounts steadily rising to roughly half-a-billion dollars last year.
That may at long last be coming to an end. The American Health Care Act, the House Republican bill to replace Obamacare, includes a provision halting federal funding of Planned Parenthood.
Abortion leaders claim that federal law already forbids taxpayer funds from covering abortion. But money is fungible, and those funds help free up resources for Planned Parenthood’s abortion business.
Unlike many Republicans, President Trump is not an unflinching opponent of Planned Parenthood. “I would defund it because I’m pro-life,” he said on the campaign trail, “but millions of women are helped by Planned Parenthood.”
Trump’s ambivalence prompted him to make Planned Parenthood an offer: Stop performing abortions, and your half-billion dollars will be safe. There was even some talk that Planned Parenthood could receive more funding if it abandoned abortion.
But it seems abortion is more important to Planned Parenthood than the other 97 percent of services it provides. Its executive vice president, Dawn Laguens, said, “Offering money to Planned Parenthood to abandon our patients and our values is not a deal that we will ever accept. Providing critical healthcare services for millions of American women is non-negotiable.”
Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards tweeted, “Planned Parenthood is proud to provide abortion — a necessary service that’s as vital to our mission as birth control or cancer screenings.”
The truth is, Planned Parenthood needs abortion because it accounts for 86 percent of its revenue. As the Washington Examiner‘s Philip Wegmann put it last week, “[L]ike a butcher that doesn’t sell steak or a fast food restaurant that doesn’t sell burgers, Planned Parenthood couldn’t stay in business without offering abortion.”
More philosophically, Planned Parenthood needs abortion because it really believes it is an integral part of women’s healthcare. Its doctors performed roughly 324,000 abortions in fiscal 2015. That’s about one-third of the national total. Meanwhile, it provides less than 1 percent of pap smears and less than 2 percent of clinical breast exams.
One of the key negotiating tactics Trump emphasizes in his book The Art of the Deal is “use your leverage.” In this case, Trump’s leverage takes the form of a Republican Congress intent on defunding Planned Parenthood as well as the knowledge that most people oppose using tax revenues to pay for abortion.
Trump’s offer reveals the value of having a businessman in the White House. The president negotiated to convince automakers to remain in the U.S., and Boeing to keep down the price of Air Force One. With his Planned Parenthood offer, Trump has exposed the dishonesty behind the group’s emphasis on “women’s health.”
