The head of Planned Parenthood says it’s time to stop insisting that abortion is only a “small part” of what her organization does because to do so is “stigmatizing.”
In an interview with the Washington Post’s KK Otteson, Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said she has no problem with the public’s perception that Planned Parenthood is primarily an abortion provider.
“I think abortion is health care,” explained Johnson. “And so, if the first thing they think about is health care when they think about Planned Parenthood, I think that’s fine. Planned Parenthood proudly serves all forms of sexual and reproductive health care, including abortion, and I think when we try to exclude it, we’re excluding a critical part of and a critical option for health care.”
Of course, as pro-life organizations have argued for years, abortion is not healthcare. Pregnancy is not a disease to be cured, and terminating a pregnancy is rarely, if ever, necessary. “Abortion,” declares the American Life League, “is an act of killing, and nobody in this nation should have the right to kill an innocent human being and call it ‘healthcare.’”
Perhaps stunned by Johnson’s forthright defense of Planned Parenthood’s primary business, Otteson tried to give her an out. “But it [abortion] is a very small part of all the things Planned Parenthood does, right?” she asked.
“Overall, certainly,” replied Johnson. “But it is still a critically important part of what we do. So I think when we say, ‘It’s a small part of what we do,’ what we’re doing is actually stigmatizing it. Like: It’s really not a big deal that Planned Parenthood does this. We are a proud abortion provider. We believe that abortion is health care, and we believe, fundamentally, that self-determination begins with being able to control your own body and freedom begins with being able to control your own body. So I don’t like to marginalize it in that way.”
In other words, “Let’s stop downplaying our very raison d’ être: population control via abortion. Let’s quit pretending that, as we have long claimed, abortion is only three percent of what we do and instead proudly proclaim our commitment to an unlimited right for all females to murder their gestating children, preferably at taxpayers’ expense.” After all, a billboard stating, “The most dangerous place for an African-American is in the womb,” is what Johnson said prompted her to join Planned Parenthood in the first place.
As many outlets have documented, Planned Parenthood derives far more than three percent of its revenue from abortion. Slate reported in 2013 that abortion accounts for a third of Planned Parenthood’s income, a fact the organization conceals through accounting tricks. Former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson, whose conversion to the pro-life cause was documented in the book and film Unplanned, puts the figure at more than half.
Based on Planned Parenthood’s 2018-2019 annual report, the Charlotte Lozier Institute calculated that abortion comprises 95 percent of the group’s pregnancy-resolution services.
Despite Johnson’s willingness to admit that Planned Parenthood is mainly in the abortion business, she still prefers to couch the actual procedure in the language of “self-determination,” as if abortion only involved one person — the one who usually (but not always) survives it.
Furthermore, she acts as if pregnancy is something that just happens to a woman, like catching a cold. If Roe v. Wade were overturned, she told Otteson, “in some states you may get to decide if it’s time for you to start your family or not, and for other states you will have to be forced into pregnancy if you don’t have the resources to get out.”
It’s also quite ironic that Johnson complained that pro-lifers are “leveraging public dollars through crisis pregnancy centers” to convince women not to abort their children when Planned Parenthood rakes in hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds every year — and, through its affiliates, got an additional $80 million in Paycheck Protection Plan loans last year.
Still, Johnson’s remarks may prove helpful in convincing all but the most ardent abortion advocates that Planned Parenthood isn’t simply about women’s healthcare. It is “a proud abortion provider” that seeks to maintain and expand a radical regime of abortion on demand.
