Planned Parenthood

[saintignatius74]

I’m engaged in a debate over the percentage of Planned Parenthood’s revenue that comes from performing abortions. I’ve seen numbers from less than 15% to over 90%. The person I’m debating refers to the PP 2009 Annual Report which shows it as 14.4%. I’m attempting to support a position that PP is not about reducing abortions. Any help?

 

[austenbosten]

This might help ya.

spectator.org/blog/2011/04/08/planned-parenthood-is-about-ab

 

[_Abyssinia]

This might help ya.

spectator.org/blog/2011/04/08/planned-parenthood-is-about-ab

Former director of a Planned Parenthood, Abby Johnson, debunks the 3% of services at Planned Parenthood are abortion claim as well:

And while Planned Parenthood says abortions make up just 3 percent of its services, I found they used an sleight of hand, unbundling family planning services so each patient shows anywhere from five to 20 “visits” per appointment (12 packs of birth control would show up as 12 individual visits). It does the opposite for abortion visits, bundling them together so each appointment shows as one visit. This skews the numbers. You have an overwhelming number of “visits” for family planning compared to abortion, even though you may have seen the same number of patients.

aolnews.com/2011/03/08/opinion-defund-planned-parenthood

Another article debunks 3% claim

lifenews.com/2012/01/03/planned-parenthoods-abortions-are-just-3-claim-is-false

 

[scipio337]

You’ll get grilled on your sources. NPR kinda debunked the “3% claim”.

PP can hand out 99 condoms, and bundle services, but roughly 10% of people who walk in the door actually have an abortion.

Initial story:

npr.org/2011/03/07/134337001/Budget-Battle-Threatens-Planned-Parenthood-Funds?ft=3&f=1003,1004,1007,1013,1014,1017,1019,1128

Follow up, addressing the figures:

npr.org/2011/03/08/134367441/Letters-Manning-Up-And-Planned-Parenthood

Another figure to ponder is that of if PP performed 1 million pregnancy tests in 2009, and performed 300,000 abortions, 1 in every 3 actual pregancy tests ended in an abortion, and that’s not even considering the number of pregnancy tests that may have been negative.

Let’s say 50% of those 1 million women tested weren’t pregnant. It’s a wild guess, but that would mean that 60% of pregnancies discovered at PP ended in an abortion.

“Not about abortion”, my foot!!

 

[scipio337]

The “15%” of revenue is bunk, too.

PP’s annual revenue is 1 billion (!!!), but nearly 50% of that is government grants and reimbursements of $487 million.

If you look at their annual report, “clinic revenue” is $320 million,

At an average cost of $500, total revenue from abortion services was approximately $164,154,000

51% of their revenue from “services provided” (not federal $$ or charitable donations) are from performing abortions.

 

[losh14]

You can look at it in a number of ways. Abortion as a percentage of the total number of services provided might be heavily diluted - if, for example, every time a script for the Pill is filled, that’s 12 ‘services’ provided per patient per year. The story linked above puts it in another way - if every abortion is preceded by a pregnancy test, and every abortion is followed up by contraception, then a few weeks later with a pelvic exam, yes abortion only counts for 25% of the total services provided to that patient, but the other services were related to that abortion.

If you look at the percentage of patients receiving an abortion, that would paint an entirely different story. One effective note I’ve seen is the percentage of pregnant women who come to PP and then get an abortion. Abortion is effectively diluted if you include mammograms and well-woman care (which is noble and I wish they’d focus on that far more), so it makes sense to look at what happens to pregnancies as they come in - what percentage are taken to term and arranged for adoption, what percentage are kept by the mother, and what percentage end in abortion?

It would also make sense to slice the data by age group and ethnicity. What kind of treatment is being sought by 15-to-19-year-olds, versus that being sought by 35-to-39-year-olds? Do white women have fewer abortions than black women, controlling for economic class and geography?

If you want to do a more in-depth statistical analysis, I’d be happy to help you if you can get data.

 

[saintignatius74]

If $161M in revenue is from abortions provided, is the shortfall (from 51%) from services provided that are subsidies for abortions while not listing these services as abortions?

 

[losh14]

The “15%” of revenue is bunk, too.

PP’s annual revenue is 1 billion (!!!), but nearly 50% of that is government grants and reimbursements of $487 million.

This is an extraordinarily good point. Federal funds may not go to cover abortions. Abortions thus must be accounted for in:

If you look at their annual report, “clinic revenue” is $320 million,

The only other component I could see them in - for the sake of cleaning up accounting - is insurance. I don’t know if PP is on an insurance network, but proceeds from insurance contracts would have to be looked at.

Since abortions are likely the sole surgical procedure performed at PP (they don’t actually perform live deliveries, at least not intentionally, do they?), it does make sense they’d be the most expensive single item and possibly cluster of items. So to make a solid case that PP is substantially an abortion-provider, you’d have to look at both revenue generated by abortions, and abortions as number of services provided, and abortions as percentage of treatments provided to pregnant patients.

One thing that PP (and Guttmacher Institute) likes to do with numbers is to shift the population size being looked (the denominator) so to make the percentage larger or smaller as serves their purpose. What I mean is this: think back to the report that claimed to show that 97% of Catholic women use contraception. For starters, they restricted that population to women of child-bearing age, and who were not actively trying to get pregnant or currently pregnant. That reduces the total population of women by probably 2/3rds or more.

What’s interesting is that the question asked in that study “Have you ever used artificial contraception?” would have applied just as fine to women who are currently pregnant, or who are trying to get pregnant, or who are older than child-birthing age. So I don’t know if they mixed mindsets there or what.