Planned Parenthood reports record-breaking abortion numbers, increasing every year since 2008
Although abortion rates overall are falling, the annual report for the nation's largest abortion provider indicates that it performed a record-breaking number of abortion procedures and continues to receive sizable taxpayer funding.
Planned Parenthood's 2018-2019 annual report, which was released last week, shows that the group performed 345,672 abortions procedures in 2018, the highest number in recent years, an approximately 4 percent increase from 2017.
Over the past decade, the organization saw a nearly 7 percent rise in abortions performed from 2008 to 2018. The group now performs 40 percent of all abortions in the United States.
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Planned Parenthood has carried out more than 5.6 million abortions since the year 2000, and it continues to receive taxpayer funds through various government entities.
Planned Parenthood's report notes that it received the highest amount of federal funds in its history. From 2017 to 2018, the group saw funding increase 9.4 percent, from $563.8 million in 2017 to $616.8 million. Federal funding has grown nearly 70 percent since 2008.
Despite a drop in private donations, the group reported that its total revenue exceeds $1.6 billion, with net assets nearing $2 billion.
Due to a Trump administration executive order requiring Title X family planning fund recipients to separate abortion from other birth control services, the group decided to forego $60 million in federal dollars.
The abortion giant is also now in the business of "gender-affirming" care, selling hormones to individuals who self-identify as transgender and nonbinary.
The data comes after a tumultuous year in 2019, during which disagreements among the board of directors and its now-former president Dr. Leana Wen resulted in her being ousted in July. The discord continued in the months that followed over the terms of her exit package.
Wen, who has since taken a job teaching public health at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., refused to sign a confidentiality clause as part of her severance agreement that would have forbidden her from speaking about certain things.
“They want to silence my voice as a public health expert," she said in a September interview with The Baltimore Sun.
“I simply will not sign away my right to speak my mind. I won’t compromise my integrity.”
To the chagrin of the board of directors, during Wen's eight-month tenure at the helm, she focused on re-branding Planned Parenthood as a comprehensive healthcare outfit as opposed to an abortion advocacy organization.
The New York Times noted in December that the abortion rights leaders in the U.S. believe their movement and the legal right to abortion is now imperiled given divisions on the political left, several state laws restricting abortion at the point when a fetal heartbeat is detected being passed, and President Donald Trump's unexpected win in 2016.
Supporters of abortion rights in conservative states say the national leaders of the abortion rights cause are out of touch in large part because they live in jurisdictions where the legal right to abortion is never threatened.
While Planned Parenthood has increased its share of abortions performed, the abortion rate has dropped steadily in recent years. According to data compiled by the Guttmacher Institute, from 2014 to 2017, the number of abortions performed in the U.S. dropped from 926,190 to 862,320, a 7 percent decrease and record low.
Last month, a pro-abortion group called Abortion Care Network released a report, titled “Communities Need Clinics,” showing the number of independently owned abortion clinics — not including Planned Parenthood facilities — has declined by 32 percent since 2012, with 136 clinics having closed since 2014.
