Planned Parenthood Is No Friend To Women

On Thursday, Health Affairs claimed that if Planned Parenthood were to lose taxpayer funds, women would suffer without access to health care. The report paints a rather bleak picture for low-income women: More than half of Planned Parenthood locations are  in “medically underserved areas” and “the number of low-income women in need of family planning services increased by 17% from 2000 to 2010… [Now] 20.1 million, are in need of publicly funded contraception.”

In the past, Planned Parenthood has claimed that half of their patients are enrolled in Medicaid. Let’s take a look at those numbers for a second:

If it really is true that half of Planned Parenthood’s patients are enrolled in Medicaid, then it’s clear they’re targeting lower-income women. Nationally, 1 in 5 Americans are enrolled in Medicaid. This means that half of Planed Parenthood’s clientele are from these 20 percent who rely on federal funds.

NPR recently reported that 79 percent of Planned Parenthood’s clients in 2012 “lived at 150 percent of the federal poverty level or lower (that comes out to around $18,500 for a single adult).”

How Planned Parenthood Preys Upon Poor Women

The numbers are clear: 20.1 million women cannot afford contraception, and are stuck trying to rely on Planned Parenthood for help. Willis L. Krumholz has explained that in order to sustain itself financially, abortion providers have an incentive to undersupply birth control to keep women dependent upon abortion-on-demand.