There was a time in America when citizens supported the idea of ‘planned parenthood,’ that individuals can and should determine when and if they have children. The golden era was during the women’s rights movement of the 1960s and ’70s. Marching beside the nation’s women all along was Planned Parenthood. The national organization, formed in 1917, drew controversy upon inception back in the olden days when its main goal was advocating for contraception and providing contraceptives. But mention Planned Parenthood today and the first thing that comes to mind is America’s most divisive issue: abortion. And for the umpteenth time, Congressmen are attempting to cut all federal funding of Planned Parenthood, the lone organization that has undoubtedly been the life-saving grace for many a girl and woman, more so for the poor among us.
Because it’s already against the law, Planned Parenthood—the most financially scrutinized not-for-profit in the nation—cannot use federal tax funds for abortion services. However, The Catholic News reported this year that government funding is the largest source of revenue for Planned Parenthood: $500,000 million annually for an organization that performs more than 300,000 abortions a year. Another online fact sheet claimed Planned Parenthood’s government funding, including Medicaid and other federal health department reimbursements, makes up 94 percent of its total revenue. The Washington Post Fact Checker looked into the revenue and services conflict but used figures provided by Planned Parenthood posted on its website: three percent on abortion services, 42 percent on sexually transmitted disease prevention and treatment, 34 percent on contraceptive services, nine percent on cancer screenings, and 11 percent on women’s healthcare. Each year Planned Parenthood reportedly serves three million people, mostly women and girls but also male adolescents and men.
Planned Parenthood’s total revenue is $1.164 billion, meaning less than half comes from the government, each state also obligated to provide a funding match for Department of Health services like Medicaid. The organization divided its 2017 revenue figures and sources as:
$543.7 million in revenue, 37 percent from government health services reimbursements and grants;
$267.5 million, 36 percent private contributions;
$318.1 million, 22 percent non-government health services revenue;
$34.3 million, five percent other revenue.
Picture if you will
Many people cannot forget those pictures from inside the womb of fetal development, first shown in the 1960s: wondrous images of tiny bodies, feet, limbs, heads and facial features in mere weeks in human development. Why, it looked just like a fully formed newborn baby. When the happy couple discovers they are expecting, the baby is fully formed in their minds and hearts. That makes miscarriage all the more heartbreaking as well as pregnancy termination for whatever the reason.
Another development that would change the public’s collective mind about abortion was miraculous medical advancements with premies: premature babies born as early as five months, not fully ready for life outside the womb but arriving just the same. Imagine holding a 16-ounce bottle of water then realizing that was the size of a premature baby who managed to survive and grow outside the womb and today is healthy and normal. In light of those developments, millions of people who may have once supported abortion started to change their minds, seeing the procedure as unnecessary, immoral, selfish and cruel especially when so many couples are waiting to adopt.
Still Planned Parenthood is not going away and remains strong in its mission, “striving to create the healthiest generation ever.” The website features a quote from president Cecile Richards: “We are here today to thank generations of organizations, troublemakers, and hell raisers who formed secret sisterhoods, who opened Planned Parenthood health centers in their communities, and demanded the right to control their own bodies.” That was the issue that led to legalized abortion in the 1970s: females demanding control over their bodies and their lives. And, too, control over their time, which is very important yet left out of the national feud. When abortion was legalized, ensuring a safe medical procedure, it was supported by tens of millions of women who knew others had undergone a back-alley abortion or used other means like a wire hanger and were permanently injured, infected or died. They didn’t want any of that, those gruesome extreme measures that confused young girls will take to end an unwanted pregnancy, to ever happen again—not in this country, not in modern times.
Last year The Kaiser Poll, a conservative organization, reported that 75 percent of Americans still support federal funds to Planned Parenthood while 22 percent support cutting all federal funds to the organization. The poll also revealed that one in three women and one in four people have visited Planned Parenthood for health services. Aren’t health services, 97 percent of what Planned Parenthood provides, to ensure a healthy population worth our tax dollars?
In recent decades, terrorism tactics along with screaming protesters outside the doors of Planned Parenthood clinics culminated in closing many facilities and cutting the number of doctors willing to perform abortions, still a legal medical procedure. How many doctors were murdered because they worked for Planned Parenthood or in their private practice performed pregnancy terminations? During the 1990s as the abortion issue escalated along with physician harassment and murder, President Bill Clinton maintained his policy would be to ensure abortion was ‘safe, legal and rare.’
But … 300,000 abortions a year isn’t a rare occurrence. It makes so many Americans very angry to think abortions occur every day; despite the many reasons physical, financial or other; however complex and personal. As long as federal tax funds are used to provide abortion services, citizens feel they can vehemently object, claiming religious and moral grounds and a violation of the soul, theirs and the unborn as they believe it. The idea of abortion being a private matter, a personal issue and individual belief, that is nobody’s business but the human female young or old will not be tolerated—not in this country, not in this century.