It's been a productive weekend folks; behold this weekend's second "stand alone newsbite" posting:
Planned Parenthood claims women get more abortions if they don’t have access to contraception - though research suggests otherwise.
During the recent debate over whether to cut off government funding to Planned Parenthood, the organization claimed that its contraceptive services prevent a half-million abortions a year. Without their services, the group’s officials insist, more women will get abortions.
* SO... IS PLANNED PARENTHOOD CORRECT? THE AUTHOR OF THIS PIECE - KIRSTEN POWERS, FORMER CLINTON ADMINISTRATION STAFFER - DID A BIT OF RESEARCH.
Turns out, a 2009 study by the journal Contraception found, in a 10-year study of women in Spain, that as overall contraceptive use increased from around 49% to 80%, the elective abortion rate more than doubled.
* OOPS!
In the U.S., the story isn’t much different. A January 2011 fact sheet by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute listed all the reasons that women who have had an abortion give for their unexpected pregnancy, and not one of them is "lack of access to contraception."
* OOPS!
In fact, 54% of women who had abortions had used a contraceptive method, if incorrectly, in the month they got pregnant.
For the 46% who had not used contraception, 33% had perceived themselves to be at low risk for pregnancy; 32% had had concerns about contraceptive methods; 26% had had "unexpected" sex, and 1% had been forced to have sex.
* "UNEXPECTED" SEX. GOTTA LOVE THAT ONE!
Not one fraction of one percent said they got pregnant because they lacked access to contraception.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Lack of knowledge of contraception also isn’t a reason that American women get abortions. Guttmacher reported that only 8% of women who undergo abortions have never used a method of birth control.
* AND OF COURSE THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THIS 8% WAS UNAWARE OF THE EXISTENCE OF BIRTH CONTROL, ONLY THAT THEY CHOSE - FOR WHATEVER REASON - NOT TO USE BIRTH CONTROL. (*SHRUG*)
[W]hat is truly astonishing about the Guttmacher statistics is that they are completely unchanged from a decade ago.
Over [the past decade], the U.S. government has funneled billions of dollars to Planned Parenthood, in large part because the organization claims to provide services to avoid unplanned pregnancies – a laudable goal.
Yet despite a robust budget - Planned Parenthood reported a total annual revenue of $1.1 billion in its last financial filing - the organization has done absolutely nothing to change the fundamental dynamics of the United States’ abortion rate.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD IN DISGUST*)
To preserve its federal subsidy, Planned Parenthood continues to claim that without its contraception services the abortion rate will go up.
* AND AS HAS JUST BEEN DEMONSTRATED, THERE'S SIMPLY NO EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THIS FALSE CLAIM.
This deception smacks of a fleecing of taxpayers in an effort to promote an ideological agenda, rather than a sincere effort to help women plan families.
(*SORROWFUL NOD*)
What is that ideology, exactly?
* GOOD QUESTION... (EXCELLENT QUESTION, KIRSTEN!)
To find out, you have to dig through Planned Parenthood’s tax forms because the group certainly isn’t going to tell you.
(*RUEFUL CHUCKLE DEVOLVING INTO A SNICKER*)
According to its most recent tax filing, the purpose of Planned Parenthood Federation of America is to provide leadership in “achieving, through informed individual choice, a U.S. population of stable size in an optimum environment; in stimulating and sponsoring relevant biomedical, socio-economic, and demographic research.”
* AHH...
So it is, in reality, a population-control organization.
(*SNORT*)
Funny, this was never mentioned in the gauzy $200,000 advertising campaign launched last week. (It also doesn’t make it into the “About Us” section of the group’s website, which repeatedly claims its mission is to protect women’s health, when in fact the real mission is to keep the birth rate at whatever level the leaders believe it should be.)
To hear Planned Parenthood and their supporters, they exist only to provide Pap smears or breast exams or prenatal services. In fact, President Cecile Richards has gone so far as to erroneously imply that they provide mammograms. (A spokesperson for the group confirmed to me that this is untrue.)
Planned Parenthood officials are allowed to believe whatever they want and to pursue whatever goals they choose. But their dishonesty in how they present their organization to the public, along with ignoring basic statistics about their area of expertise, makes you wonder what else they are hiding.
It’s also hard to deny that they are at core a blindly ideological organization, not a run-of-the-mill charitable nonprofit.
(*NOD*)
Whatever you think of abortion rights, this is not the kind of organization that taxpayers should be funding.
* I AGREE!
***UPDATE***
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