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PPFA’s deceits and deceptions beginning to unravel

Aug 4, 2015

The “only 3%” myth is crumbling

By Dave Andrusko

PPFA President Cecile Richards

PPFA President Cecile Richards

Hat’s off to National Review’s Rich Lowry. Following in the footsteps of Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, NRLC’s director of education, Lowry brilliantly exposes “The 3 Percent Dodge.”

What 3 percent dodge? When pinned in a corner, proponents and defenders of Planned Parenthood pooh-pooh the importance of abortion to Planned Parenthood.

Actually, better put, they imply that abortion is such a small percent (the aforementioned 3 percent) of its “services,” it is patently ridiculous for opponents to zero in on the 330,000+ abortions it performs each and every year.

It’s more like a public service that PPFA performs out of the generosity of its heart.

Dr. O’Bannon’s has explained the PPFA bookkeeping sleight of hand many times.

Lowry addresses the same evasion from a journalist’s perspective. (Another example of debunking from the popular press can be found at slate.com.)

Lowry makes a number of points, but let’s focus just on what we find in this paragraph:

The 3 percent figure is an artifice and a dodge, but even taking it on its own terms, it’s not much of a defense. Only Planned Parenthood would think saying that they only kill babies 3 percent of the time is something to brag about.

So, even if abortion was only 3% of PPFA services, why is that a defense, let alone a badge of honor? It’s neither.

But the figure is not 3%. It’s not remotely close to 3%. Lowry writes

The 3 percent figure is derived by counting abortion as just another service like much less consequential services. So abortion is considered a service no different than a pregnancy test (1.1 million), even though a box with two pregnancy tests can be procured from the local drugstore for less than $10.

Lowry has a very clever comparison. “The sponsors of the New York City Marathon could count each small cup of water they hand out (some 2 million cups, compared with 45,000 runners) and say they are mainly in the hydration business.”

Put another way, PPFA bundles its services when it serves its purpose, and unbundles them when it makes PPFA look better. PPFA counts everything given to, or done for, a given woman as a separate service. So if a woman comes into a Planned Parenthood clinic for an abortion, she’ll probably also have a pregnancy test, maybe a test for an STD, and then may receive a packet of birth control pills after her abortion.

So, is that one “service” or four? Planned Parenthood counts each of these as a separate service.

That’s just one illustration of PPFA’s verbal dexterity (among many) that allows PPFA defenders to pretend that abortion constitutes only 3% of its “services.”

This 3% myth also ignores a truism that further clarifies the pivotal role abortion plays in Planned Parenthood’s “services”: about one out of every eight patients who walks through PPFA’s door has an abortion.

And if that weren’t enough, the “3%” figure also neatly slides around how much aborting more than 330,000 children fattens PPFA’s bottom line. At standard rates, that would represent at least $147.8 million in revenues. And that doesn’t even count the addition dollars that accrue when PPFA performs more expensive chemical abortions or abortions later in pregnancy.

Over the next few months, as Congress revisits Planned Parenthood’s federal funding and the Center for Medical Progress releases even more videos, PPFA’s legion of defenders will have an ever-more-difficult time hiding the truth: abortion is Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood is abortion.

Categories: PPFA
Tags: PPFA