New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that we should talk about the lives that Planned Parenthood saves. That’s fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that the organization exists for the purpose of taking lives.
“If we want to talk about Planned Parenthood, let’s talk about how many lives Planned Parenthood has saved and how many babies have been because of the prenatal care provided by Planned Parenthood,” Ocasio-Cortez said, calling herself a “Planned Parenthood baby” because, she claims, her mother relied on prenatal care from the organization.
That’s all well and good. If all Planned Parenthood did was provide prenatal care and other health services, there wouldn’t be many complaints coming from anybody, conservative or otherwise. But Planned Parenthood is, first and foremost, an abortion mill. No number of “Planned Parenthood babies” changes the fact that most babies don’t come out of Planned Parenthood buildings alive.
Planned Parenthood’s 2019-2020 annual report determined that the organization performed 354,871 abortions from October 2018 to September 2019. That’s an increase from the 345,672 during the same period the year before, which was an increase from the 332,757 before that. This is occurring even as the overall number of abortions nationwide is believed to be in decline.
In three years, Planned Parenthood has performed 1,033,300 abortions. So, despite Ocasio-Cortez’s wishes, the number of lives ended by Planned Parenthood will continue to be the focus of any discussions about the organization. As it should be.
Planned Parenthood was offered a chance to end those discussions before. Faced with a choice of ceasing abortions and abortion referrals or losing federal funding, Planned Parenthood chose to exit the Title X program.
It wouldn’t matter even if abortion only made up 3% of the health services Planned Parenthood provides (it doesn’t). What matters is that the organization is performing abortions, which it has said is its “core mission,” and it continues to perform more of them and an ever-larger share of the nation’s annual total of abortions.
Lots of worthy organizations provide prenatal care, but Planned Parenthood’s business model places abortion at the center of everything it does. Try as she might to shift the conversation, Ocasio-Cortez is not going to be able to do that with talk of “Planned Parenthood babies” or with sophomoric complaints about a supposed inconsistency between being pro-life and supporting the death penalty for violent criminals.
Planned Parenthood is an abortion mill, and every conversation about the organization will begin with the more than 300,000 unborn children every year who will never be able to take part in this conversation.
