The ERLC supports a plan to defund and redirect—defund Planned Parenthood and redirect those funds to community health clinics. Alliance Defending Freedom has compiled a stunning report comparing community health clinics with Planned Parenthood locations: 13,540 federally qualified health clinics and rural health centers compared to 665 Planned Parenthood locations. Even if we accept Planned Parenthood’s argument that it is a provider of women’s health services, Planned Parenthood provides much less access than community health clinics.
Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in America—performing more than 323,000 abortions a year. Planned Parenthood gets nearly a half a billion dollars every year from the American taxpayer. During 2010-2012, PPFA received $344.5 million in direct federal funds and $1.2 billion in funding from Medicaid, according to a U.S. GAO report.
Planned Parenthood’s corporate profits come at the taxpayer’s expense. Taxpayer dollars accounted for at least 40% of all the corporation’s revenue—and 100% of the corporation’s profits, according to Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report.
While taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood doubled, the number of cancer screenings they provided dropped by half. Taxpayer funding of the abortion provider doubled since 2005, but the number of cancer screenings has been cut by 50 percent and abortions provided increased by more than 12 percent.
Planned Parenthood likely violated federal law in selling fetal tissue for monetary gain. The organization alters abortion techniques to increase success of harvesting body parts from unborn babies. A Los Angeles PPFA abortion provider admitted to congressional investigators she would change abortion procedures to increase the likelihood of a successful procurement of specific fetal tissue for resale.
Planned Parenthood supports infanticide through advocacy of partial-birth abortion. For more than two decades, Planned Parenthood has advocated for the legality of partial-birth abortion and protested laws that would prohibit this practice.
The ERLC calls upon Congress to defund Planned Parenthood and redirect those funds to community health clinics throughout the 2017 budget reconciliation package.
