By L.A. Williams, Correspondent
Christian Action League
GREENSBORO — An affiliate of the nation’s largest abortion provider is suing North Carolina for cutting it out of the state budget. Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina filed the lawsuit late last week in federal court claiming that the state’s newly passed budget is unconstitutional and is an attempt to punish the organization for its role as a “particularly visible provider and advocate” of abortion.
But lawmakers, who voted last month to override the governor’s veto of the budget, contend the ban is well within the state’s rights.
“We believe the state of North Carolina ought to be able to say who is going to provide services with taxpayer dollars,” Rep. Nelson Dollar (R-Wake) told WRAL.
The Tar Heel state became the third in the nation to cut off Planned Parenthood funding. The abortion provider has also filed suit in Kansas and Indiana. Since North Carolina’s budget passed, at least another four states have followed suit.
“We’re glad to see leaders waking up to Planned Parenthood’s poor track record in terms of misuse of funds, violations of laws that require them to report sexual abuse and their overall role in promoting abortion,” said the Rev. Mark Creech. “Our state doesn’t need to be undergirding this type of organization, even if laws keeping taxpayer funds from paying for abortions are being followed.”
According to PPCNC, the money that they will lose — some $212,000 — would have been used for teen pregnancy prevention programs and family planning programs including contraceptive services. While the cuts amount to roughly 5 percent of the organization’s annual budget, PPCNC says it may have to close its Durham Clinic by Sept. 1 unless the court issues an injunction against the state’s budget change. PPCNC also operates facilities in Fayetteville and Chapel Hill.
“Planned Parenthood can say all day that they don’t use the money directly to fund abortions and that may be true. But former abortion clinic owners that have since come out of this industry give us the true picture — a business that wins the confidence of clients by providing low-dose birth control pills and cheap condoms that give them a false sense of security and bring them back through the door for an abortion when that birth control fails,” the Rev. Creech said. “Surely, private practice doctors, our health departments and pregnancy resource centers can do a better job of serving North Carolinians when it comes to reproductive health than this abortion-focused agency.”
Although Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) insists that abortion represents only 3 percent of the organization’s services, Right to Life experts who have closely watched the agency say the number is beyond misleading. To get the statistic, Planned Parenthood counts everything done for a abortion client as a separate service. So if an expectant mother gets a pregnancy test, a test for an STD, an ultrasound, an antibiotic, an Rh type or hemoglobin test and then a packet of birth control bills after her abortion, that would likely be counted as seven or more services even though nearly all of them are connected to the abortion.
Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., says a more revealing indicator is the fact that 12 percent (nearly 1 in 8) of all women who go to a Planned Parenthood clinic have abortions. In 2009, O’Bannon said more than 1.1 million women coming to Planned Parenthood had a pregnancy test. Although there is no way to know what percentage of those tests were positive, he said of the services Planned Parenthood reported that would have involved pregnant women (abortion, prenatal care, adoption referrals), 97.6 percent were abortion.
Plus, abortion is where the agency brings in significant cash. Multiply $451 (the average cost for a standard first-trimester abortion according to the Guttmacher Institute) times the 332,278 abortions Planned Parenthood performed in 2009, and it’s clear the agency brought in $149.9 million, at least 37 percent of its clinic revenues for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009. That’s not even counting more expensive abortions, some which average more than $1,500.
O’Bannon further points out that the revenue Planned Parenthood has received in government grants and contracts went from $165 million in 1998 to $363.3 million in 2009. Not surprisingly, during this same time, abortions more than doubled at Planned Parenthood, even as they dropped in the U.S. as a whole. Proof, O’Bannon says, that despite PPFA claims, the agency is truly “Big Abortion” — the nation’s biggest performer and most aggressive promoter of abortion.
“This organization boldly and unapologetically destroys over 300,000 innocent human lives every year, making millions in the process …” OBannon told National Right to Life News. “This is not only an absolute corruption of the very notion of ‘health care,’ it is a gross abuse of our most basic human rights, something that no civilized society should tolerate, much less pay for.”
The Christian Action League will be following the PPCNC lawsuit — Planned Parenthood of Central North Carolina v. Cansler — so be on the lookout for updates.