Whenever it is attack­­ed about abortion, Planned Parenthood repeats again and again that abortion is only 3% of services. However, there are four ways that this is distorted.

First, what percentage of their clients receive abortions? This number is not easily published, but we can calculate it based on a few facts. First, 20% of women have used Planned Parenthood (source PP). Second, about 28% of women have had an abortion. In 2009, 784,507 abortions were performed (Source CDC) and Planned Parenthood reported 332,278 abortions, so they performed 42% of all abortions (There’s nothing special about 2009, I just found it easiest since statistics for recent years were a little more difficult to find). If we assume that 42% applies equally over time, 12% of women have had an abortion at Planned Parenthood. So 60% of female Planned Parenthood clients have had an abortion there.

Second, this 3% forgets the time of each service. An abortion takes much more than distributing contraception or giving an STD test (those two are the majority of its services). The money corresponds much closer to the time taken by each service – they make much more on an abortion than an STD test.

Third, if anyone else killed 3% of the people they dealt with professionally, they would be called a serial killer or a mobster. We’ll see in the next point that the vast majority of pregnant clients eventually go through with an abortion and we already showed that the majority of clients eventually get an abortion. Abortion is central to their operation – if it isn’t, I invite them to prove it by splitting into two organizations: One that does abortions and one that does all the rest and gets no referral fees from the abortion organization.

Finally, they claim to offer women pregnancy options, but perform 340 abortions for every adoption referral and 47 abortions for every prenatal care client. In other words, 97.5% of services given to the preborn are abortions. This indicates that they prefer this option significantly. For comparison, imagine a pregnancy care center had only 2.5% of women go through with abortion – they’d become a model for every other center in the world: but this is their standard. Thus, “pro-choice” is a misnomer if those going to “pro-life” centers have a wider range of choices than those going to pro-abortion Planned Parenthood.

I write this today because right now, there is talk of defunding Planned Parenthood. The problem with them isn’t principally that they are selling baby parts, or principally that they hide statutory rape – although it seems they do both. The principle problem with them is that they murder the vast majority of unborn babies who get treatment in their office. I fully support defunding them. We need somewhere that offers things like STD testing and pap smears to all who need them, but why link this to an organization that kills 300,000+ human beings a year? Why don’t we promote caring centers – Catholic, Protestant or otherwise – that provide such services but won’t kill your baby.