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Yesterday, the ninth in a series of undercover Planned Parenthood sting videos was released. The video from the Center for Medical Progress features Perrin Larton, a procurement manager for the company Advanced BioScience Resources, which works with a Planned Parenthood clinic in California and provides aborted baby tissue to researchers. Previous videos have outlined Planned Parenthood's sale of aborted baby tissue and organs, which has caused them to come under fire from many groups, politicians and celebrities.
Planned Parenthood's response to the videos has been to claim that they were faked or highly edited. They also made this statement: "The allegation that Planned Parenthood profits in any way from tissue donation is not true. Our donation programs – like any other high-quality health care providers – follow all laws and ethical guidelines. Over our 100-year history, we have continually engaged leading medical experts to shape our practices, policies, and high standards – and always will."
To be clear, federal law bans the sale of unborn babies’ body parts and organs. In fact, it’s considered a criminal act. However, the law provides a loophole allowing payment for a wide range of services associated with the "donation" of aborted babies organs, including “reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage of human fetal tissue.” Planned Parenthood does receive payment for these "donations" to an approximate total of $23 million per year. Because of these concerns over buying tissue of aborted babies, many conservatives are calling for Planned Parenthood to be defunded.
It is important to note that, with the exception of extreme cases, federal money cannot be used to fund abortions. Planned Parenthood however, does receive a large amount of it's funding from the federal government.
Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in the U.S. They have received scrutiny in the past for some of their practices, including many undercover videos seeking to expose them for coercive abortions, failure to notify parents, and encouraging abortions over other options.
Those who defend Planned Parenthood note that the company provides many other services including contraception, STD/STI screenings, cancer screenings (not mammograms though), and other women's health services. These are the services for which they receive federal funding. According to their annual report, abortions make up approximately 3% of their yearly medical services.
That 3%, however, equaled 327,000 abortions last year. In total it is estimated that there were just over 1.05 million abortions performed in the U.S. in 2011 (the last available year). If this number has stayed even, it would mean that Planned Parenthood performed nearly one-fourth of all abortions in the U.S. last year. In total Planned parenthood has conducted over 6 million abortions. They are the largest provider of abortions in the country.
So why do people want it defunded? If Planned Parenthood is defunded by the federal government, they would lose approximately $500 million in funding per year. Their total yearly budget is approximately $1.1 billion per year. This means over 40% of their yearly budget comes through federal funding. Opponents believe that because so much of their operating budget comes from the federal government, this means they are thereby funding abortions as well. If Planned Parenthood were not allowed to have federal funding it would deal a serious blow to the company. It is foreseeable that this could cause them to close several clinics throughout the country, thereby limiting their ability to perform as many abortions as they do.
The Senate already attempted a vote to defund Planned Parenthood which failed by a 53-46 margin. This is not the end of the debate in Congress though. The federal government is set to run out of funding September 30th, and members of Congress are threatening to stand firm on Planned Parenthood funding, with some even threatening to shut down the government in order to defund Planned Parenthood.
When talking about whether they would seek to defund Planned Parenthood as part of the debates on government funding Mitch McConnell stated, "We just don’t have the votes to get the outcome that we’d like. I would remind all of your viewers, the way you make a law in this country, the Congress has to pass it, and the president has to sign it. The president has made it very clear he is not going to sign any bill that includes defunding of Planned Parenthood, so that’s another issue that awaits a new president, hopefully with a different point of view about Planned Parenthood."
We will see over the next few months what will happen with federal funding for Planned Parenthood. For those who are pro-life, Planned Parenthood represents abortion in the U.S. This debate has been waged for decades now and has become one of the most politically charged topics in our country. No matter what decision is made concerning Planned Parenthood funding, this debate will not be over soon.
