More than a few things have been bugging me about last week’s budget showdown, but let’s focus on one that I continued to hear throughout the weekend: abortion services account for about 3% of Planned Parenthood’s activities. Planned Parenthood, the LARGEST provider of abortions…something sounds fishy...and this goes beyond the millions in taxpayer funds given to an entity that not only doesn’t need it, but is making record profit!
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and the subject of Planned Parenthood came up with the same 3% figure intact:
Besides the fact that neither of these guys addressed the fact that Planned Parenthood is the LARGEST provider of abortions, Chris Wallace’s ‘research’ turns out the same 3% misrepresentation that we continue to hear. When looking at the numbers and performing REAL math, this is blatantly misleading about the facts, and I’m surprised Wallace’s ‘research’ wouldn’t have been a bit more thorough.
I performed my own research and quickly discovered from a Live Action report that “…in reality the significance and cost…is much higher than 3% of their efforts.” Check out these stats:
Annual abortions performed at Planned Parenthood: 332,278
Source: Planned Parenthood 2009 services fact sheet
Average cost of abortion: $468
Source: Guttmacher Institute estimate
Total income from abortions: $155,506,104
Total health center income: $404,900,000
Source: Planned Parenthood 2009 annual report
David Schmidt’s conclusion: This means that fully 38.4% of Planned Parenthood health center income comes directly from aborting unborn children. And that’s only 2009 numbers, folks! Scmidt continues, “This is a far cry from the 3% number that they try to dupe the public with. Doesn’t it say something that even Planned Parenthood, the leading abortion chain in America, tries to downplay their role in ending the lives of unborn children? Someone feeling a little guilty?”
Not to totally dismiss Cantor’s response when Chris Wallace pressed him, “But what about a million cervical cancer screenings? What about 830,000 breast cancer exams? The heck with that?” Instead of bumbling around the answer by saying that “No one differs with the fact that those are good services for women; it’s the fact that they deliver abortions…” as the reason that they fought ‘so hard’, easily playing right into the hands of Democrat demagoguery, why couldn’t Cantor simply state that those services can be acquired through a number of other medical facilities that aren’t federally funded? Then, “the fact that they deliver abortions” is supported with a bit more reason and clarity, particularly since Planned Parenthood’s 3% figure is a blatant misrepresentation of the 332,278 human lives destroyed in 2009 alone.
For all the so-called 'representatitves of the People' who demagogued on the defunding of Planned Parenthood as some kind of 'war on women's health' or who said that those desiring responsible governance are "throwing women and children under the bus", perhaps they could find some time to reflect on these words of wisdom from the late Albanian nun of Calcutta:
"America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father's role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts -- a child -- as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters. And, in granting this unconscionable power, it has exposed many women to unjust and selfish demands from their husbands or other sexual partners. Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign." (Mother Theresa -- "Notable and Quotable," Wall Street Journal, 2/25/94, p. A14)
"But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child - a direct killing of the innocent child - murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love, and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even his life to love us. So the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love - that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts. By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching the people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. That is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion."
"Please don't kill the child. I want the child. Please give me the child. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted, and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child, and be loved by the child. From our children's home in Calcutta alone, we have saved over 3,000 children from abortions. These children have brought such love and joy to their adopting parents, and have grown up so full of love and joy!"
"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
