Planned Parenthood is as secretive as it is deadly. In other words, it not only ends the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn children each year but also conceals records revealing pertinent aspects of its operation costs, important details regarding “policies and services available to minors,” and it provides different numbers on salary information based on whether it is filling out state or federal paperwork.
Take, for example, the Department of Health and Human Services’ defense of Planned Parenthood’s decision to withhold information in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. HHS claimed that releasing the requested information would be bad because doing so would result in higher quality health care at a lower cost than Planned Parenthood was currently charging.
Cue Rod Serling.
Attempts to justify Planned Parenthood’s refusal to disclose its “policies and services available to minors” have come in the form of suggesting that the information is “particularly sensitive” and, if divulged, “would discourage minors from seeking care, or parents from assisting” their children in securing “care” from Planned Parenthood.
New Hampshire Right to Life is one organization that isn’t buying this. It rightly sees this disclosure as just another part of the requested larger disclosure of operating costs and expenditures.
According to NHRTL, “If disclosure would allow parents to make an informed decision and allow the government to provide higher quality healthcare at lower cost to taxpayers, then the documents should be disclosed.”
Many Americans—including many well-meaning Americans—are under the illusion that Planned Parenthood gives away, rather than controls access to, abortion pills and birth control.
But the truth is Planned Parenthood rakes in over a billion dollars every year. It does this by charging money for contraception while also pocketing untold millions in taxpayer funds to cover the cost of contraception to begin with.
The bottom line: Planned Parenthood has figured out a way to collect cash from their clients and the American taxpayer at the same time.
For instance, Planned Parenthood’s websites show that it charges between $15 and $800 for hormonal birth control, up to $70 for early-abortion pills, and up to $1,000 for IUDs. At the very minimum, it charged low-income women $90 million for contraceptives in fiscal year 2011 and collected more than half a billion dollars in taxpayer money in that same year.
Something appears duplicitous here: the same Planned Parenthood that gets hundreds of millions in annual taxpayer funding to cover a large portion of its expenses is only doling out contraception to those who can pay for it.
Seen in this light, isn’t Planned Parenthood just a money-making enterprise that’s really here to help those who can help themselves? Or perhaps it should be considered a public service that doesn’t serve the public?
These are questions that need to be answered, and can be answered, if Planned Parenthood would simply comply with the FOIA request and hand over the pertinent files.
Until that time, the unseemly combination of death and secrecy makes Planned Parenthood look like they have something to hide. And it probably does.
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