Religious misinformation, disinformation,
lies, darn lies, statistics, etc. on the Internet:

Part 2 of four parts
Planned Parenthood funding.

This topic is continued from the previous essay.

₁ About taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood:

Many conservative religious websites and other information sources advocate for the complete defunding of Planned Parenthood (PP) by the federal and state governments.  Expose Planned Parenthood (EPP) is one of probably thousands of web sites that has displayed data similar to this: As of 2012-JUL-12 it showed:

Babies aborted by PP in 2011: 502,893

Taxpayer dollars paid by the federal government to PP in 2011: $ 531,077,574 ($11 every second)

The message is clear: they are implying that taxpayer dollars are being routed from Congress and state governments at the rate of $11 a second to PP in order to fund slightly more than a half million abortions yearly in the U.S. That would amount to almost half of the total number of abortions performed in the U.S.

However, they don't specifically say that. They merely display two large unrelated numbers, and expect you to jump to that conclusion.

The taxpayer dollars appear to be in error. As of mid 2012, the display which is supposed to register the total government grants and contracts for the previous year, 2011, was still advancing by $11 a second.

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In reality, PP's annual report covering mid-2008 to mid-2009 listed revenue sources:

It would appear that the amount that PP received from taxpayer dollars for 2008/2009 was $363.2 million a year -- much less than is shown on the EPP web site.

However, that is not the whole story:

• An article in the Washington Post stated that: "Federal law already forbids Planned Parenthood from using the funds it receives from the government for abortions." ₃ Thus, if PP were completely defunded by government, only PP's preventative, educational, and disease treatment programs would be affected.
  
  
• Through its various prevention programs, PP estimates that they prevent over 620,000 unintended pregnancies per year. That would have resulted in about 220,000 abortions. If the approximately 400,000 unintended pregnancies that resulted in live births per year were not prevented as a result of services by PP, many more parents and their babies would place a heavy burden on social service agencies.
  
  
• 75% of PP users are poor. They have incomes below 150% of the poverty line. Without services from PP many would not be able to obtain contraceptive information.
  
  
• During 2009, PPs health centers provided 11.4 million individual health services:
  
    ₃
  
  
  • 35% were sexually transmitted infection detection (STI) and treatment.
  • 35% involved contraception.
  • 16% were cancer screening and prevention.
  • 10% were other women's health services.
  • 3% were abortion services.
  • 1% were other services.

That is, 97% of PPs services are unrelated to abortion. _3,4

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• If religious conservatives are successful in defunding PP, the result would be:
  • a significant increase in undetected STIs and cancers, both of which can cause death;
    
    
  • a major decrease in the amount of contraception counseling, This would cause many more pregnancies, the entrapment of many adults into poverty, and an increase in the number of abortions to end the unwanted pregnancies; and
    
    
  • a major increase in the number of deaths among embryos, fetuses, youths and women.

Thus, defunding Planned Parenthood by the Pro-Life movement would, in fact, be an anti-life development.

This topic continues in the next essay

References used:

The following information sources were used to prepare and update the above essay. The hyperlinks are not necessarily still active today.

1. Abortion Protesters Photo; © Awakenedeye; downloaded from Dreamstime.com
2. "The Promise of Change," Planned Parenthood Federation of America annual report, 2008-2009, at: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
3. Ezra Klein, "What Planned Parenthood actually does, in one chart," Washington Post, 2012-FEB-02, at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
4. "Fact Sheets & Reports," Planned Parenthood, at: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/
5. Nicholas Fandos, "Hundreds brave snow at March for Life in Washington," New York Times, 2016-JAN-22, at: http://www.nytimes.com/
6. Michelle Boorstein, "As DC shuts down for a blizzard, a small, faithful crowd still joins the March for Life." Washington Post, 2016-JAN-22, at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/
7. Bethany Goodman, "Snow will not stop Friday's March for Life," March for Life, 2016-JAN-21, at: http://marchforlife.org/
8. Steve Jalsevac, "Solid evidence reveals large March for Life turnout vs. NY Times’ 'hundreds' and Post’s 'thousands'," Life Site News, 2016-JAN-23, at: https://www.lifesitenews.com/
9. Russ Hepler, "Thousands March For Life in Blizzard – National Media Silent." The Federalist Papers Project, undated, at: http://www.thefederalistpapers.org/
10. Bob Unruh, "Matters of life and death: Storm troopers: Pro-lifers issue chilling Supreme Court warning," 2016-JAN-23, at: http://www.wnd.com/
11. Christine Rousselle, "Stranded Pro-Lifers Celebrate Mass on the Side of the PA Turnpike," Townhall, 2015-JAN-24, at: http://townhall.com/

Copyright © 2012 to 2016by Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
Originally written: 2012-JUL-13
Latest update: 2016-JAN-25
Author: B.A. Robinson

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