Following the release of Planned Parenthood’s annual report yesterday, the Susan B. Anthony List issued a press release reporting the following facts:
- During fiscal year 2011-2012, Planned Parenthood reported receiving a record $542 million in taxpayer funding in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements. Taxpayer funding consists of 45% of Planned Parenthood’s annual revenue.
- In 2011, Planned Parenthood performed a record high 333,964 abortions.
- Over the past three reported years (2009-2011), Planned Parenthood has performed nearly one million abortions (995,687).
- Cancer screening & prevention services and contraceptive services provided by Planned Parenthood continue to drop. Contraceptive services have dropped by 12% since 2009, and cancer screening & prevention services have dropped by 29%.
- Planned Parenthood reported a total of three million clients in 2011, meaning that 11% of all Planned Parenthood clients received an abortion.
Though the Hyde Amendment prohibits the federal government from funding elective abortions, the simple fact is that money is fungible. As the FRC pamphlet America’s Abortion Provider: What Everyone Should Know about Planned Parenthood states, “By funding non-abortion services, the federal government essentially allows Planned Parenthood to cover overhead and other expenses, as it pursues a more lucrative and lethal business—abortions.”
In the Chart 1 from America’s Abortion Provider, we first show the correspondence between Planned Parenthood’s government funding and the number of abortions it performs.
However, in Chart 3, we show the almost perfect co-variance between annual increases or decreases in federal funding for Planned Parenthood and the following year’s increase or decrease in the number of abortions they perform.
The only exception to the very close correlation between present-year funding and next-year abortions is 2007-2008. At this point, we see a shift to correlation between present-year funding and present-year abortions.
As America’s Abortion Provider notes, “[i]n the end, the operating model of Planned Parenthood is such that its abortion activities require the overhead and general funding support of the federal government.”