Planned Parenthood’s abortion imperialism goes global

May 02, 2024 7 Reactions

Planned Parenthood made use of $699 million in United States taxpayer funds to perform over 390,000 abortions last year, according to the organisation’s recent annual report.

The number represents a 5 percent increase from the previous year.

“It’s been nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court took away our right to control our own bodies and lives by overturning Roe v. Wade,” declare the opening lines of the report, which reads more like a woke manifesto than a sober accounting of what the behemoth “non-profit” does with its $2.2 billion in assets.

Peppering the report’s pages are testimonies from “trans women”, boasts about its “gender-affirming hormone therapy” services, and glossy photographs of eclectic staff members who look different but almost certainly think alike.

Flouting the law

A major theme of the report was how Planned Parenthood has upped its efforts to help pregnant women access services across state lines, as jurisdictions around post-Roe America shore up protections for the unborn.

“In the year after the decision, 90 patient navigators across 41 Planned Parenthood affiliates helped more than 33,000 people get the transportation and travel support, financial assistance, and referrals they needed to get abortion care,” according to the report.

What’s missing, of course, are the tragic details behind each of those 33,000 stories (not to mention the 357,000 other women who accessed Planned Parenthood abortions locally). How many of these women were victims of prostitution, underage sexual abuse, or human trafficking? Given the moral landscape of America today and the nation’s wide-open borders, we can be certain the answer is not zero.

In a just world, Planned Parenthood’s probable complicity in human trafficking at the taxpayer’s expense should be headline news.

Global reach

Further down the report, there’s a story that could easily be missed but that should concern every taxpaying American: Planned Parenthood’s international expansion.

“Leveraging well-established partnerships spanning 80 organisations across nine focus countries, Planned Parenthood Global harnesses extensive technical expertise and flexible funding to incubate, convene, and defend brave individuals, organisations, coalitions, and movements for sexual and reproductive health and rights globally,” the report gloats.

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Among the stats provided as evidence of Planned Parenthood’s global reach are “28,000 people received training in sexual and reproductive health and rights”, “112 policy wins in 8 countries” and “500,000 sexual and reproductive health services provided by partners”.

In other words, Americans are paying to abort brown babies overseas, and to recruit and indoctrinate local pro-abortion activists all across the Global South.

Exploiting the poor

Writing for The Washington Stand, pro-life advocates Arielle Del Turco and Mary Szoch provide additional details on the tax-exempt titan’s abortion imperialism:

Notably, 90% of Planned Parenthood’s global efforts focus on countries where unborn babies have strong legal protections from abortion… In one example, Planned Parenthood worked to chip away complete protections for the unborn in Mexico. The abortion giant claimed that due to its efforts, unborn babies in Quintana Roo can now be killed through abortion up to 12 weeks gestation.

They continue:

This is a perfect example of ideological colonialism. It’s abusive for a powerful and well-funded organization like Planned Parenthood to enter poor, vulnerable countries with legitimate needs and coercively work to dismantle pro-life protections instead of offering practical help.

And sadly, Planned Parenthood’s target countries are places where women actually need real health care. According to the U.N., improvements in maternal mortality have stagnated in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 70% of all maternal deaths are located in sub-Saharan Africa.

Nor are these efforts a well-meaning but misguided attempt at humanitarianism. As Del Turco and Szoch explain, Planned Parenthood has a naked profit motive:

They are a direct service provider, which means that they can make money from the abortions that happen when pro-life policies are reversed. When Planned Parenthood reports 112 policy victories, that is 112 places that they can rake in more money. Planned Parenthood may paint its efforts as benevolent humanitarian work, but make no mistake: this is a business — a deadly one that should not be exported abroad.

Far more helpful for Planned Parenthood’s target countries would be improved sanitation, clean water, food and actual health care. As the pair write, “pregnancy isn’t a disease, and abortion isn’t a cure”.

Given that recent polling has found two-thirds of Americans opposed or strongly opposed to the use of tax dollars for abortions abroad, it shouldn’t be a hard ask to see these efforts banned by Congress — pending the outcome of November’s election, of course.

What do you think of Planned Parenthood's tactics? Leave your comments in the box below.

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.

Image credit: Planned Parenthood building in Ann Arbor, Michigan / Bigstock

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Paul Bunyan commented 2024-05-04 08:15:42 +1000

mrscracker, 99% of their problems would be solved with a lower birth rate. Higher birth rates always lead to higher poverty, crime, hunger, war and misery. Economic growth isn’t going to help, because the system is rigged to exacerbate income inequality.

It led to a complete disaster in Romania, and it’s starting to occur in the US now.

“In absolute terms, the number of African children living in poverty is predicted to drop steeply: in 2012, 216 million children were estimated to be living below the $1.90 (£1.44) a day World Bank threshold. The ODI predicts the number will fall to 148 million in 2030.

However, because of other groups moving out of poverty faster, and because African women average more than four births each, their share in global poverty will double to 43%.

“It’s not that the number will grow,” said Kevin Watkins, one of the report’s authors. “The point is that poverty is not coming down in Africa in comparison with elsewhere.

“We’ve had economic growth, and child mortality rates have dropped dramatically over the last 20 years, but fertility rates haven’t started to shift.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/aug/25/high-birth-rates-poverty-undermine-generation-african-children-odi-report

https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/15/romania-exposes-how-abortion-bans-kill-women-rip-society-apart/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0161893888900348
mrscracker commented 2024-05-04 00:41:22 +1000

Whether or not those in Africa & the global South have the First World’s means to raise their children doesn’t make their developing infants less human or less valuable. Human life is either sacred or it’s not.
Paul Bunyan commented 2024-05-03 18:35:19 +1000

If women in developing countries weren’t under so much pressure to have children they neither want nor can afford, PP wouldn’t need to go to those countries.

https://apnews.com/article/health-africa-sexual-and-reproductive-health-united-nations-26d6b7947a5f905ca7a707ce6d780120

“The report by the U.N. Population Fund said the data covers only about one-quarter of the world’s countries, over half in Africa. But the findings “paint an alarming picture of the state of bodily autonomy for millions of women and girls” who don’t have the power to make choices about their bodies and their futures without fear or violence, it said.

The fund said only 55% of girls and women in the 57 countries are able to decide whether to have sex, whether to use contraception and when to seek health care such as sexual and reproductive health services.

“The denial of bodily autonomy is a violation of women and girls’ fundamental human rights that reinforces inequalities and perpetuates violence arising from gender discrimination,” said the fund’s executive director, Dr. Natalia Kanem. “The fact that nearly half of women still cannot make their own decisions about whether or not to have sex, use contraception or seek health care should outrage us all.”

According to the report, “My Body Is My Own,” percentages vary across region.

While 76% of adolescent girls and women in east and southeast Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean can make decisions on sex, contraception and health care, less than 50% can in sub-Saharan Africa and central and south Asia, the report said. "
Malcolm McLean commented 2024-05-03 16:38:27 +1000

The elephant in the room is that before you have sexual intercourse with another person, whether you are a man or a woman, you should ask yourself “What if this results in a baby? Can I afford that financially? Will the other person support and co-operate, or might they make things difficult? Do I want a link with the other person which means that we both accept responsibility for the same child, and so we will have to interact intimately for the next 18 years?” And often, yes, this is no sort of probem. Often that is what you actively want, or at least are very happy to accept. But if the answer is “no”, you should not be having sex. You just haven’t got your relationship to the point where that is appropriate on a psychological level. And so abortions should be very, very rare. And Planned Parenthood just don’t seem to understand what “Planning” means.
mrscracker commented 2024-05-03 02:41:16 +1000

It’s revolting for sure & especially so if it’s committed using taxpayers’ dollars.
Michael Cook followed this page 2024-05-02 22:03:40 +1000
Kurt Mahlburg published this page in The Latest 2024-05-02 12:30:41 +1000

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