The Planned Parenthood website (no, I’m not going to link to it) proudly proclaims: “For nearly 100 years, we’ve worked to improve women’s health and safety, prevent unintended pregnancies, and advance the right and ability of individuals and families to make informed and responsible choices.”
If we were to set what we know about Planned Parenthood aside and simply evaluate their claims at face value, it would be reasonable to expect that in proximity to any given Planned Parenthood facility, measurable health statistics like teen pregnancy rates would go down.
Because they work to “prevent unintended pregnancies,” right?
Not so much.
In Texas, a study was conducted to find the answers to this very question. And in what will come as a surprise to virtually no one reading this, it was revealed that the only time when teen pregnancy rates went down was when Planned Parenthood either decreased their activities, or completely closed up shop and left town.
A study across the Texas Panhandle, using government statistics from 16 counties, found that the teen pregnancy rates among 13-17-year olds from 1994 through 2010 showed dramatic declines even as Planned Parenthood Federation of America facilities in the region shut down—dwindling from 19 family planning facilities to zero.
For decades, PPFA has publically maintained that it serves a key healthcare role for the American public by educating teens on “safe sex,” providing contraceptives, and reducing pregnancies. The breakthrough study titled “A Longitudinal Analysis of PPFA and Teen Pregnancy in the Texas Panhandle” refutes that claim. Found within a meta-analysis of Planned Parenthood, the report states that the teen pregnancy rate “reached its lowest point in recorded history two years after disaffiliation of the last two remaining facilities.”
The study analyzed data obtained from the Texas Department of State Health Services, Vital Statistics Annual Report, Table 14B, for the years 1994 through 2010: “In 1996, the year before opposition to Planned Parenthood began, the average teen pregnancy rate in the 16 counties where Planned Parenthood operated facilities was 43.6 per 1,000 girls aged 13 to 17. By 2002, the rate had dropped to 28.6. In 2008, the year the last two Planned Parenthood facilities disaffiliated from PPFA, the teen pregnancy rate was 27.2. And in 2010, two years after the Texas Panhandle became Planned Parenthood-free, the teen pregnancy rate had fallen to 24.1.”
The raw data gleaned from government files shows that with a teen population stable at about 13,000, the actual number of teen pregnancies fell from an average of 544 per year in the five years before Planned Parenthood started closing its doors to an average of 373 in the last five years.
Now, I can already hear the arguments about the difference between correlation and causation, and I will grant that data like this doesn’t make a conclusive case that the decrease in the teen pregnancy rate is a direct consequence of Planned Parenthood being forced to scale back and eventually go out of business entirely.
Fortunately, I’m not a statistician. I am instead a practitioner of the mostly-abandoned art of common sense, and what I know — and I’m guessing you do too — is that the entire Planned Parenthood business model is built on risky sexual behavior. Providing contraceptives, tests for STDs, and abortions is an enterprise that only brings in the bucks if you have enough customers having sex and trying desperately not to get pregnant or come home with a disease. While it’s true that not getting pregnant is something many married folks do, it is unquestionably less desirable to get pregnant if you’re unmarried. And when it comes to STDs, well, unless you’re engaging in promiscuous behavior, that’s probably not going to be a concern. (In ten years of marriage, I’ve never had to go get tested for one. Go figure.)
So it stands to reason that business is only booming if people are engaging in behavior that’s best not discussed in polite company. And how does a business encourage people to do just that? Well, they like to call it, “education.” The reality is a little less academic:
Planned Parenthood argues that comprehensive sex education, including an introduction to homosexuality and all its variations, must start in kindergarten. From kindergarten through college, Planned Parenthood promotes sexual rights, sexual freedom, and even dangerous sexual acts such as anal sex and fisting.
To see where this philosophy leads, one need only look at International Planned Parenthood Federation. It promotes “sexual rights” for people under 18 years of age, even as young 10.
And if you don’t think this is tied to the Planned Parenthood bottom line, think again:
Jim Sedlak, a recognized expert on PPFA and vice president of American Life League—the organization that underwrote the five-part meta-study in which the Panhandle report is contained—did point to Planned Parenthood’s business model.
“Based on the retention rates that Planned Parenthood published routinely until the mid-1990s, it consistently lost 43 percent of its customers annually. Today, PPFA is a $1 billion business,” said Sedlak. “The only demographic big enough to furnish that many new customers every year is teens and young adults who engage in frequent sex. Planned Parenthood can make millions on preaching safe sex. It goes broke on abstinence.”
Under Obamacare, Planned Parenthood was first in line to start receiving funds for the comprehensive sex education program—funds totaling $375 million.
That was my emphasis on the quote from Mr. Sedlak, because that’s a money quote if I’ve ever heard one. That, in a nutshell, is what the entire Planned Parenthood business model boils down to.
And the last sentence about Obamacare? Maybe that’s why right now, this is what the front page page of the Planned Parenthood website is selling:
Like peanut butter and jelly, these two. A match made in…well, certainly not heaven.
The unholy alliance between Obamacare and Planned Parenthood isn’t going away any time soon. Hopefully we’ll see more statistics demonstrating the relationship between Planned Parenthood and undesirable social outcomes like teen pregnancy.
I just wish those statistics didn’t have to come at the expense of real people being conned into thinking that there’s such a thing as a safe way to engage in risky, uncommitted, extra-marital sexual behavior.