Planned Parenthood Annual Report: Abortion Totals, Government Funding Increase

Planned Parenthood Annual Report: Abortion Totals, Government Funding Increase
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 8, 2009



Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has released its annual report for fiscal year 2007-2008. The document shows the nation's largest abortion business is getting bigger as it showed an increase of five percent more abortions and increased taxpayer funding.

According to Planned Parenthood's latest report, abortions increased to 305,310 abortions up from 289,750 in 2006.

That 5.3 percent increase came at a time when the Alan Guttmacher Institute, it's former research arm, showed abortions were at near-historic lows.

Thus, while abortions were on the decline in the United States, and while Planned Parenthood sought to distance itself from its abortion business, Planned Parenthood did more abortions than it has done in years.

The annual report showed more government funding heading to the abortion business even if the taxpayer funds did not directly pay for abortions.

The total government grants and contracts received by PPFA affiliates from government sources including state, local and federal governments, increased from $337 million to $350 million.

Looking at Planned Parenthood data from 1997 to the present, the increase in government funding corresponds with an increase in the number of abortions. (See image)

In 1997, Planned Parenthood did about 160,000 abortions and received approximately $160 million in total taxpayer funding from various levels of government. Both the number of abortions and the amount of money received from government, supposedly for family planning to reduce abortions, has double since then.

In previous annual reports, Planned Parenthood had been criticized for a lowering of the number of adoption referrals and then leaving the referral number entirely out of its previous annual report.

This new document boasts that the number of adoption referrals provided by Planned Parenthood increased by over 100 percent from 2,410 referrals in 2006 to 4,912 referrals in 2007.

However, the total number of adoption referrals still amounts to a number equal to only one-third of the increase in the number of abortions done by Planned Parenthood affiliates.

Planned Parenthood also says it helped just under 11,000 women in 2007 with prenatal care and pregnancy help services.

Yet, prenatal care and adoption referrals resulted for only 5 percent of the total services provided to women in 2007 while abortions accounted for 95 percent of the services that year, according to Planned Parenthood's own figures. (See image)

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