Planned Parenthood Faces New Scrutiny Over Abortions, Abuse

An anti-abortion group's new probe of Planned Parenthood charges that the family planning organization has doubled its abortion business with a doubling of taxpayer support and fails to report instances of suspected child abuse.

The report, provided to Whispers, is being released tomorrow by Planned Parenthood's arch-critic Americans United for Life, which says that it is the compilation of over 20 years of investigations. The group hopes that it will push the state-level attempts to cut Planned Parenthood funding onto the national stage.

"Before other organizations have been defunded, they have often been investigated to determine if they deserve the continued generosity of the American taxpayer. This report that comes out from AUL tomorrow provides that foundation for making a decision about whether to fund Planned Parenthood at the state and federal levels," said an official.

Parts of what is in the report is known, but AUL hopes that the impact of all the information in the 37-page report spur Washington to action.

Among the charges the group will urge Congress to investigate:

• Abortion is Planned Parenthood's chief business, with 340 abortions occurring for every adoption referral.
• As federal funding has doubled, so has the number of abortions performed.
• Some state clinics are accused of overbilling government health care programs.
• The handling of sexual abuse cases is uneven.

Planned Parenthood issued this statement in response to the report:

We are proud of the trust millions of women place in us every year to provide high quality health care. We approach our work with a deep sense of responsibility to the patients we serve, and recognize that the importance of our work is growing because in many communities we are often the only source of affordable quality health care for women.

This so-called report is a politically driven attack by an organization opposed to birth control and expanded access to birth control.

It uses discredited, recycled and misleading claims to attack Planned Parenthood and should be viewed with a skeptical eye.
 

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