Another Planned Parenthood Deception
The True Measure of PP's Abortion Business
Planned Parenthood (PP) claims that abortion accounts for only 3% of their services. That’s like having a big steak and a serving of peas for dinner, and claiming that the steak made up only 3% of the dinner because you had 32 peas and 1 steak. The 3% figure is accurate, but very misleading. Here’s how they came up with it. In 2009 PP claims to have performed 11,383,900 total services, of which 332,278 were abortions. That comes out to about 3%. The problem is that they equate an abortion with a pregnancy test or a breast exam; each counts as one service.
It would be more accurate to look at the percentage of their revenue that comes from abortions. In PP’s 2008-2009 fiscal year, their total revenue was $1.1 billion. They don’t say how much of that came from abortion services, but let’s say they make an average of $500 for an abortion. (This is probably a low estimate because some PP clinics do 2nd trimester abortions that can cost $3,000-$5,000 or more.) So that means they made $166,139,000 from abortions. That would mean that abortions account for about 15% of their total revenue.
But that is still misleading because $671 million (61%) of their total revenue came from government subsidies and private donations, leaving only $429 million that came from “health center income and other operating revenue,” which includes abortions. If you consider only their revenue from services, abortion accounts for a whopping 39%. That’s the number that shows the real significance of PP’s abortion business.