Planned Parenthood engages in taxpayer waste, covering up sex abuse scandals, and hypocritical lobbying on issues of speech. Plus, it's not needed.

House Democrats want to reinstate international abortion funding. Planned Parenthood’s new CEO, Leana Wen, is focusing on abortion as the forefront of Planned Parenthood’s offerings and goals. And the March for Life is this Friday, where tens of thousands––perhaps even hundreds of thousands––of people will protest abortion in Washington DC.

The fact is that political parties are going to keep fighting on abortion. Republicans will claim that they prioritize pro-life policies, even though they didn’t defund Planned Parenthood or pass any federal bans when they controlled Congress and the White House. Meanwhile, Democrats will keep abortion sacrosanct.

Both parties are wrong: abortion should be ended. The first step to this should be a bipartisan ending of Planned Parenthood’s funding. To quote March For Life President Jeanne Mancini about America’s largest abortion company, “protecting vulnerable, unborn citizens should be a bipartisan goal.”

Planned Parenthood dominates the Democratic Party, even though Planned Parenthood violates a number of the party’s core principles. As shown below, women are harmed by Planned Parenthood, and the vulnerable––such as sex abuse victims and the unborn––are sacrificed for profit and political advance.

“Both parties ought to unite around redirecting” Planned Parenthood’s funding, Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in an email to me. She noted that other facilities offer all of Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion services and “vastly outnumber” the abortion giant’s locations.

Since SCOTUS showed last month that it is not willing to risk political controversy by hearing state-level defunding cases, it’s important that pro-life advocates create more of our kind to gain political advantage across all levels of government. To that end, here are eight nonpartisan reasons Planned Parenthood should be defunded.

1. The Unborn Are the Most Vulnerable People

The main argument for abortion is that what occupies a pregnant womb is not a human being. But science proves that unborn life begins in the womb. From Just Facts* comes proof––not the organization’s own opinion, but 10 original sources provided in just the short section below. Readers can click to each source from the numbered hyperlink to verify the original citation:

Fertilization normally takes place within one day of intercourse but can occur up to six days later. [34] [35]

At fertilization, humans’ genetic composition is formed. [36] This genetic information determines gender, eye color, hair color, and facial features. It also influences characteristics such as intelligence and personality. [37]

Per the medical textbook “The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology”: “fertilization” creates “a new combination of chromosomes that is different from that in the cells of either of the parents,” and this marks the “beginning of a new human being.” [38]

The four characteristics of life (growth, reproduction, metabolism, and response to stimuli) are present at fertilization. [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]

Unborn children feel pain, react to their surroundings, and have their own distinct blood. Their helplessness makes them the most vulnerable of all humans, a demographic Democrats stake their reputations on protecting.

This is the best reason Planned Parenthood should be defunded. It kills more than 320,000 human beings each year, according to its annual reports.

2. Planned Parenthood Covers Up Sex Abuse

Planned Parenthood has been accused by the pro-life group Live Action of hiding sex abuse. Live Action has undercover videos and personal testimonies to make its case. Planned Parenthood says Live Action is lying. It also has materials showing its support for survivors of sexual assault.

However, state officials in Alabama discovered that a Planned Parenthood center in Mobile covered up the suspected abuse of a 14-year-old girl. The girl already had two children and went to the center for two abortions in four months in 2014.

I spoke to a senior Alabama health official who defended giving Planned Parenthood a light punishment. Like every other state in the nation, Alabama requires health workers to report suspected abuse of minors. Planned Parenthood’s Mobile location didn’t do that. The official told me his department believed it was an error.

I asked the official if “essentially, your department was satisfied [Planned Parenthood] had acted in good faith, and not intentionally hid this information’ from child protective services.”

The official said that what I described was accurate. He also asked me to frame the situation differently to avoid pressure by the state’s pro-life advocates, saying it “would be much better” if LifeSiteNews “could word [the situation]in a way that [Planned Parenthood] had considered the possibility [of abuse] but simply hadn’t reported it, and after review with senior management, they are revising their policies, and they did report it, and they will report similar instances in the future.”

Got that? Alabama officials believed Planned Parenthood’s Mobile location accidentally broke a state law designed to protect minors, and that this should excuse their lack of protecting an abused minor.

3. Hurting Women In Other Ways

Did you know that research shows contraceptives can cause blood clots, death, glaucoma, gestational diabetes, breast cancer, depression, and general pain for women? Planned Parenthood acknowledges but downplays many such risks of contraceptives. Despite these risks, it gave out almost 2.7 million various contraceptives to women in 2016.

Planned Parenthood also ends the lives of about 6.6 percent of girls who would otherwise be born each year. The full calculations for that number may be seen here. About 157,000 unborn girls are denied the right to leave the womb and become women.

This 6.6 percent does not include sex-selective abortions. There is evidence this happens domestically. Planned Parenthood’s California chapter opposed a sex-selective abortion ban, even though the national Planned Parenthood says it opposes sex-selective abortions.

These numbers also do not include the many abortions that may be caused by several of the federally approved contraceptives that double as abortion-inducing drugs or devices.

One person who has seen firsthand how women are hurt by Planned Parenthood is Lauren Handy. A dedicated advocate for women considering abortion, she told me that she “purposely live[s] below the poverty line” so as to not support Planned Parenthood with tax dollars.

Handy said her activism started after “a woman just coming out of her abortion” was holding “her womb area in pain as her boyfriend dragged her along.” Handy “dropped out of college, sold all my belongings, and became a full-time pro-life missionary.” She holds signs in front of abortion centers which show graphic images of abortion victims, “medical diagrams of what the abortion procedure actually entails,” and provides non-abortive resources for desperate women.

4. Illegally Selling Baby Parts

Planned Parenthood has denied illegally selling baby body parts. These denials came despite federal and state criminal referrals and investigations. The district attorney in Orange County, California filed charges against two companies that allegedly partnered with Planned Parenthood. Those companies settled for almost $8 million, admitted fault, and stopped their work in California.

A court order has prevented any more of the Center for Medical Progress’s (CMP) videos, which allegedly show Planned Parenthood engaging in illegal activity, from being released. CMP lead investigator David Daleiden told me these videos “will be the final confirmation that Planned Parenthood and their business partners are guilty.”

If you haven’t watched the CMP videos, which were released in 2015, please do so. In one of them, baby body parts are piled like slabs of meat. Stopping this shouldn’t be controversial.

5. Medicaid Fraud And Taxpayer Waste

Congress should cut all inefficient and illegally spent money. This includes monies misspent by Planned Parenthood, an organization Dannenfelser described as “perpetually mired in scandals.”

For example, the Texas attorney general’s office found evidence that Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast (PPGC) engaged in fraud. PPGC denied the claims in 2013. It settled the case for $1.4 million. Wisconsin auditors found overpayments in 2014 at five Planned Parenthood centers and three other abortion centers.

Finally, the Alliance Defending Freedom and Charlotte Lozier Institute examined dozens of state audits and three federal audits, which show that Planned Parenthood centers across the country waste millions of taxpayer dollars. Even the state of New York––an abortion-friendly state––targeted Planned Parenthood in 2009 for overbilling.

Planned Parenthood For America did not respond to a request for comment about the audits and investigations.

6. Free Speech And Private Property Hypocrisy

Elected officials promise to uphold the U.S. Constitution, and public programs are subject to its protections. Despite receiving more than $540 million in public money, however, Planned Parenthood does not support free speech for all citizens.

For example, Planned Parenthood has sued to stop state and federal defunding efforts. It argues that eliminating funding for Planned Parenthood puts its rights and those of its clients at risk.

Yet Planned Parenthood backed a California law that would have forced pro-life centers to refer for abortion. Planned Parenthood wanted to force private citizens to speak their message. It also backed another California law that restricted the ability of journalists to engage in undercover investigations.

This hypocrisy also applies to property rights. Planned Parenthood backed the mobs which were arrested on Capitol Hill last year, saying “protest is patriotic.” Likewise, in 2014, people affiliated with the organization handed out condoms on Hobby Lobby property in protest of Hobby Lobby’s successful lawsuit against the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.

But again, Planned Parenthood seems to think protests are patriotic only when they support their narrative. Pro-life advocates outside of Planned Parenthood centers had to fight all the way to the Supreme Court in 2013 to be allowed within 35 feet of abortion centers in Massachusetts. Planned Parenthood lost that case, but it has consistently urged lawmakers to ban pro-life advocates from using public property for free speech.

7. Planned Parenthood Isn’t Needed

Public dollars should only be spent where necessary. While reasonable people can disagree on the existence of many federal and state programs, eliminating Planned Parenthood’s public sinecure is easy to justify on the basis that it is not necessary.

Pro-life pregnancy resource centers take care of pregnant women better than Planned Parenthood can. First, these centers provide free ultrasounds, maternity housing, adoption assistance, clothes, diapers, and more for women in desperate circumstances. Planned Parenthood charges for many of its services.

Second, pro-life centers outnumber abortion clinics. Best of all for those who are concerned about fiscal matters, most are privately funded, which protects taxpayers. In fact, taxpayers see a net benefit from pro-life centers. Citing a Charlotte Lozier Institute study published in 2018, Heartbeat International Director of Communications Andrea Trudden told me, “In 2017 alone, pregnancy help centers served more than 2 million women and men in the United States, saving taxpayers more than $161 million.”

Life Advancement Group* co-founder Benjamin Kraft said in an email that “these centers support women in many different situations, from first-time expecting mothers to single moms with multiple kids who are struggling to make ends meet.” According to Kraft, one center “provided more than 1,600 medical and support services to women in need” with just a $250,000 budget.

For Planned Parenthood’s other services, such as cervical cancer screenings and breast exams, federally-qualified health centers provide them. And it is these centers which pro-life groups have, for years, urged federal lawmakers to redirect Planned Parenthood’s funding because these centers provide other non-abortive services such as contraceptives.

So, again, clearly Planned Parenthood-specific funding isn’t necessary because what Planned Parenthood offers is either immoral or provided elsewhere. But it is also the case that some of the dollars should be eliminated from the federal budget forthwith instead of being redirected.

Such immoral ends should never be funded by the public. Additionally, rather than reduce abortion rates, research shows that widely available birth control increases the prevalence of abortion, above and beyond the abortion-inducing potential of several drugs and devices.

The least expensive and most effective option for birth control is abstinence. It’s free, and it’s 100 percent effective in all consensual circumstances. It is also the solution that calls upon adults to engage in sexual intercourse as adults instead of like children who feel entitled to using someone else’s money in their bedroom.

8. Planned Parenthood Uses Public Money For Political Advocacy

If the list above isn’t enough, Planned Parenthood uses taxpayer money to fund tens of millions of dollars of political advocacy. This is a favorite bipartisan activity. Politicians regularly give your money to their favored corporations, unions, and non-profit “charities” that are actually political advocacy groups.

Eliminating Planned Parenthood’s federal funding should be part of a bipartisan effort to clean house. Making our government smaller would ensure that tax dollars are used far more efficiently––whether for folks concerned about abortion, corporate farm subsidies, or our oversized Department of Defense. It would also reduce the influence of outside groups on our elected officials.

*Just Facts is one of my former clients. Life Advancement Group is a former client of my company, Proven Media Solutions.