Poorly equipped, unsanitary, and understaffed facilities. A sewage leak caused patients to vomit. Positive sexually transmitted infection results went unreported.
The New York Times gave a shocking glimpse behind the curtain of Planned Parenthood. Although the legacy media usually defends and promotes the largest U.S. provider of abortion (nearly 39% of all abortions in our country), some things are too egregious to ignore.
This is what Planned Parenthood dispenses under the guise of providing “necessary women’s health care.”
These grotesque lapses aren’t due to a lack of funding, but a lack of desire to provide quality care. According to its 2022-2023 annual report, the collective organization received over $2 billion in income, including $699.3 million in taxpayer funding and $997.5 million in private donations. Yet, they don’t prioritize “care, no matter what,” as their advertising claims. Instead, they funnel money into lawsuits and to loyal politicians, spending nearly $40 million in the 2024 election cycle.
Their goal is to overturn any limitations on abortion, even arguing against basic safety standards that would improve care for the women Planned Parenthood claims to be concerned about.
I have seen the disintegration of Planned Parenthood’s mission firsthand, as I worked part-time for a local Planned Parenthood while I was an OB-GYN resident 30 years ago. At the time, I wasn’t concerned with my ideological differences on the abortion issue, especially since they never asked me to perform abortions. I enjoyed my time there, caring for underserved women, performing necessary gynecologic services such as pap tests, well-woman exams, STI testing, and contraceptive management. Like many Americans, I assumed that abortion was only a small part of the services they provided, and that other services were addressing women’s needs.
When I compare Planned Parenthood’s 1996-1997 annual report, which coincides with my employment there, to today, their mission is clearly more focused on abortion to the neglect of other services. Whereas they provided 1.5 million pap tests in 1996, that has plummeted by 87% to 197,617 in 2022. Adoption referrals dropped 72%, from 6,274 to 1,721. 14,292 prenatal clients have decreased to 6,316 prenatal services.
Meanwhile, the number of abortions they sell rises every year, from 153,367 in 1996 (11.3% of the 1,366,000 abortions performed that year, per Guttmacher Institute) to 392,715 of the estimated one million abortions sold in the U.S. in 2022 (39%). Planned Parenthood only has a few options to resolve a woman’s pregnancy: prenatal services, adoption, miscarriage care, and abortion. 97% of the time, she’s sold an abortion. As an organization, then, Planned Parenthood appears to care far less about helping women through their pregnancies or plans for adoption than they do about selling women abortions.
My recent experiences with Planned Parenthood are far different from my impression three decades ago. As an obstetric hospitalist, I have provided care for several women who suffered complications from the abortions Planned Parenthood sold them. In each case, Planned Parenthood failed to offer them an appointment or offered nonsensical advice like “rub your tummy” when they reported heavy bleeding.
But don’t just take my word for it. The media have been recently sharing horror stories highlighting their poor-quality care.
We’ve seen the stories of incomplete abortions, an IUD placed in a pregnant woman resulting in a stillbirth, and an improperly placed contraceptive which resulted in nerve damage, reported in an exposé by The New York Times.
18-year-old Alexis Arguello recently died after a late-term abortion at a Fort Collins, CO, Planned Parenthood. According to a physician who testified about her death, the facility waited too long to notify emergency responders when she experienced a complication during her abortion at 22 weeks’ gestation. EMS was allegedly advised not to use sirens to facilitate her rapid transport to the hospital.
Instances of Planned Parenthood employees failing to ask questions to identify and assist trafficked women and facilitating transport of minors out of state for abortions without parental notification have been documented many times.
Since Planned Parenthood facilities are preferentially providing abortion drugs, frequently by mail, women can’t go to them if they experience complications. Instead, these women will go to the ER, where hospitalists like me will care for them. And even if a Planned Parenthood facility were nearby, they would be incapable of providing proper treatment.
Planned Parenthood marketing has successfully gaslit Americans, convincing them that desperate women would have no health care options without Planned Parenthood. This is untrue. There are thousands of federally qualified health center service sites (FQHCs) in the U.S., providing many health services for women in need. Medicaid health insurance is accepted by most private health care providers, expanding the options for women, and also providing the prenatal services that Planned Parenthood rarely provides.
We must look beyond Planned Parenthood’s slick marketing and gaze into the soul of this heartless organization. Better care is available for women from other organizations, and women deserve better than what Planned Parenthood offers.
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By Dr. Ingrid Skop, M.D., FACOG, Vice President and Director of Medical Affairs for Charlotte Lozier Institute.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.
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