Why We Don't Need Planned Parenthood

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Planned Parenthood vs. Federally Qualified Health Centers 

Planned Parenthood claims that women would lose access to low-cost healthcare if they were to stop receiving taxpayer funding. However, there are 5,300 of the 17,890 taxpayer-funded community health clinics that provide everything that Planned Parenthood provides for women and more - minus abortion.    

According to Planned Parenthood themselves, more than 98% of American women will not enter one of their facilities in a given year. Despite that fact, Planned Parenthood received $699.3 million in U.S. taxpayer funding in 2022-2023. That is more than ever before. However, they are also seeing fewer patients, providing fewer non-violent services for women, and have fewer facilities each year.  

Planned Parenthood has been decreasing the other medical services they provide for years. According to their annual report, adoption referrals dropped 7%, preventive-care visits by 31%, and pap tests by 13.5%. Their number of clients served is down by 3.8%. What has increased? Taxpayer funding.   

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and free Community Clinics are a BETTER option for women than Planned Parenthood. The HRSA spends $5.1 billion on more than 11,000 FQHC sites annually (the remainder are “look-a-like” clinics that provide medical care but are not formally classified as FQHCs for a variety of reasons). Re-allocating Planned Parenthood’s $500 million to this budget would allow the funding of 1,078 additional FQHCs that would provide quality medical care to the underserved.  

Planned Parenthood data sourcing here.

  • They offer services to all persons regardless of the person’s ability to pay, and, unlike Planned Parenthood, they provide comprehensive primary care services. They also offer more women’s health services, including Mammograms which Planned Parenthood does not offer. 
  • There are more than 17,890 FQHCs, FQHC Service Sites, and FQHC “Look-Alikes” across the United States. 5,300 of these FQHCs specifically provide women’s health services. Planned Parenthood has less than 600 facilities. 
  • FQHCs served 31 million patients in 2023, compared to the 2.13 million of Planned Parenthood (which is down from the previous year). 
  • In every Congressional bill that has been proposed to defund Planned Parenthood, legislators proposed redirecting money previously earmarked for Planned Parenthood to these FQHCs and community clinics so they can serve more people.  
  • Planned Parenthood’s 501c(4) spends millions on elections and lobbying each year. FQHCs spend $0 on influencing public policy.  
  • FQHCs bring economic benefits to low-income communities. They generate $63 billion in total economic activity each year and employ more 300,000 employees.   
  • FQHCs can do more with your money.  

Pregnancy Resource Centers 

  • In 2017, pregnancy centers provided almost 2,000,000 people with FREE services, with estimated community cost savings of at least $161 million annually. 
  • 2,752 center locations nationwide provide vital services, including medical services, parenting programs, and sexual risk avoidance education. 
  • More than 7 in 10 locations offer free ultrasounds (up 24 percent since 2010). 
  • 400,100 hours of free services were contributed by credentialed nurse sonographers and registered diagnostic medical sonographers in 2017. 
  • 100 mobile units with ultrasound are on the road to bring services to women out in the community. 
  • 30,000 contacts per month reach Heartbeat International’s Option Line hotline and email/chat lines. 
  • 67,400 volunteers serve pregnancy centers, including an estimated 7,500 medical professionals who freely give of their time and skills. 
  • Centers carried out 679,600 free pregnancy tests in 2017. 
  • 295,900 moms and dads attended parenting courses. 
  • 24,100 after-abortion support clients were seen in 2017 (services include support, counseling, and referral to professional help when appropriate for both women and men). 
  • More than 1 million students attended community-based sexual risk avoidance education presentations in 2017. 

So, we can add Federally Qualified Health Centers to Pregnancy Resource Centers to get a grand total of about 16,300 better options for women to find healthcare and/or actual supportive services than Planned Parenthood. 

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Planned Parenthood?

Planned Parenthood is a non-profit and the nation’s largest abortion vendor, committing over one in every three abortions done in the country, which equals about 947 every single day. About 96% of their services to pregnant women are abortions. They also provide contraception and STD testing along with other preventative care, all of which has been significantly decreasing over the past decade. 

But don’t they do a lot of good stuff too like providing low-cost birth control?

They mark up their birth control and are battling many lawsuits related to fraudulent Medicaid payments made to Planned Parenthood. One lawsuit is in Iowa from a former Planned Parenthood director who has evidence of the fraud. They were ordered to pay over a million dollars in restitution to Texas when found guilty of defrauding taxpayers. And in California, a 2004 audit showed that Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside counties received excess payment of various kinds of contraception over $5.2 million. This is only a fraction of the fraud they’ve been found guilty of.  

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FHQCs) also get taxpayer money but do not do abortions and clients pay on a sliding scale – basically what they can afford. Requirements to operate as an FQHC: 

  • Serve an underserved area or population 
  • Provide care on a sliding fee scale based on ability to pay 
  • Operate under a governing board of directors that includes patients 
  • Complete annual reporting requirements 
  • Provide holistic health and social services 
  • Have an ongoing quality assurance program

    Lastly, doing subjectively good things does not outweigh the injustice of endangering women and taking over 345,672 innocent lives a year. There are virtually no abortion reporting laws, and chemical abortion is the least traceable statistic. The real number is likely exceedingly greater than what they are willing to share in their annual report. 

Does Planned Parenthood get taxpayer dollars? How much per year?

Yes, they received over $554,000,000 last year, making up 41% of their budget.

What do they do with that money?

By law, they are supposed to use it for family planning services other than abortion. But money is fungible and as a former Planned Parenthood director said, “As clinic director, I saw how money affiliate clinics receive from several sources is combined into one pot, not set aside for specific services.”  

Here’s the kicker: Planned Parenthood gets more money every year but serves fewer people.  

  • Planned Parenthood’s 2019 annual report shows a decrease in healthcare services, while abortions have increased. 
  • Abortions have increased from the last report from 332,757 to 345,672 (4% increase). 
  • They committed 81 abortions for every adoption referral. 
  • They committed 35 abortions for every prenatal care service provided. 
  • Since 2010, prenatal care services have dropped 68%. 
  • Cancer screenings have decreased from 614, 361 to 566,186, an 8% decrease. 
  • Pap tests have decreased from 274,145 to 255,682 a 7% decrease (they perform .3% of all pap tests in the United States). 
  • Planned Parenthood claims a network of 13,000,000 supporters, but only 30,000 have taken an action, meaning less than 1% of their “supporters” are actually engaged. 
  • Planned Parenthood affiliates diagnosed 240,384 STIs, but only treated 43,000. This means that Planned Parenthood fails to treat 84% of STIs it diagnoses. 

But if Planned Parenthood is defunded, won’t all those people who rely on them for healthcare be left to fend for themselves?

First, no one wants to take away healthcare from anyone, especially women and their families. According to Planned Parenthood’s own annual reports, 98% of all women won’t even step foot inside a Planned Parenthood all year, so they are wildly overstating their importance in the healthcare market.  

Secondly, if Planned Parenthood is defunded, the money will be reallocated to FQHCs, which outnumber Planned Parenthood’s 20-to-1. FQHCs serves more than 25 million people each year versus Planned Parenthood, who served 2.4 million in 2019.  

Better choices for women are usually right around the corner. Alternative women’s health options are on average less than five miles away from the nearest Planned Parenthood.  

To find an FQHC near you, go to http://getyourcare.org/. 

What if I'm Pro-Choice and Think Planned Parenthood Should Continue to be Federally Funded?

Even many Americans who identify as pro-choice are significantly uncomfortable with taxpayer-funded abortions. One poll in late 2016 showed 58% of Americans are against using taxpayer funds through Medicaid to pay for abortions. 

Another poll in 2015 revealed that 62% of Americans opposed taxpayer funding of abortion, including 45% of those who identify as pro-choice, 61% of Independents, 44% of Democrats and 65% and 61% of African-Americans and Latinos respectively.   

Continuing to fund Planned Parenthood is giving corporate welfare to an organization that continues to close facilities every year and serve fewer patients. 

Another point to consider is that Planned Parenthood, several affiliates, and their business partners have been under criminal investigation for laundry list of crimes including profiting off of the sale of the body parts of babies they aborted, compromising patient privacy, altering the abortion procedure to obtain better fetal tissue and thereby putting the health of the mother in danger, failing to comply with the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, and failing to comply with the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. For information on all these charges, see www.ppcharges.com.