In a stunning new annual report, Planned Parenthood of Western Washington (PPWW) reveals that it saw a significant drop in customers in 2007 … with one major exception. The total number of “medical visits” fell 15%, from 150,000 in 2006, to 127,000 in 2007.
The number of emergency contraception sales – a significant source of largely illegal revenue – fell 13%. Government records show a $1m drop in revenue from Medicaid billings for emergency contraception.
And their number of Take Charge patient exams actually fell 25%, from just under 70,000 to just over 50,000. The Take Charge program has been the major factor behind PPWW’s doubling in size and revenue under the Bush Administration. Again, state Medicaid records show a $1.5m drop in reimbursements for oral contraception. Their extraordinary – and again largely illegal – profits from reselling all forms of contraception at a 3 to 4 times purchase price even fell, from $9.6 million to $7 million.
Even more dramatically, the number of “Pregnancy Visits” fell a startling 50%, from just under 32,000 to just over 16,000.
Their number of “Tests and treatments for Sexually Transmitted Infections” also fell 50%.
With this drop in clients and revenue line items, you would expect their program revenue to have taken a hit from the 2006 level of $22.5 million.
And you would expect the number of abortions to have declined also, right?
But you would be wrong on both counts. Very, very wrong.
Program revenue stayed pretty much flat. How did they do that? Well, we don’t know for sure. But we have a partial explanation.
The only number that didn’t go down was the number of abortions performed. In fact, that number jumped a shocking 16% from 2006 to 2007, to a record 9,059.
It seems that regardless which direction all the other numbers move, one thing that is constant with PPWW is that their number of abortions goes up.
We have noted on this blog that their number of abortions has been rising at 11% per year despite all their claims that “no-one does more to reduce the need for abortion” than Planned Parenthood, and their repeated promise that distributing emergency contraception was going to result in hundreds of thousands of fewer abortions across the country.
But now they are actually killing 50% more babies than they were just 3 years ago!
How Do They Do More Abortions With Fewer Clients?
We have asked PPWW about these stunning figures, but they have refused to comment, so we are left to speculate.
The most obvious question is: how are they doing 16% more abortions with 50% less “Pregnancy Visits”? Now almost 60% of all pregnancy visits end in abortion. Three years previously, just 18% of pregnancy visits ended in abortion.
Our best guess is as follows: historically abortion clinics like PP have women come in when they are pregnant for a pregnancy test and a counseling session. That counts as 1 visit. Then they would schedule an abortion, previously all surgical. That’s a second visit. Then some of those women would come in for a followup. Third visit.The new PP “protocol” seems to be to do the counseling session on the first phone call. This includes the abortion sell. At the end of that phone call the abortion is scheduled for the first visit. No pregnancy test. No ultrasound viewing of their baby. No viewing of fetal models. No reflection period. We suspect these conversations include subtle pressure about how if they “wait too long” they will no longer be eligible for a chemical abortion, which is “more natural”, “more like a miscarriage”.
Probably most of these abortions are now chemical. The 2006 annual report noted that 33% of their abortions were now chemical. The new report (2007) made no mention of the new figure.
We don’t know if the women are pressured to take the first abortion pill at the clinic to avoid the “risk” of the women changing their mind if they take it home to take. But we do know that many women don’t return for the followup visit.
This would perfectly explain the new numbers.
Interestingly, the annual report is long on whining and complaining about government cutbacks and forced employee layoffs. But there is no attempt to explain any of these astonishing trends in their abortion rate, or how they managed to keep their program revenue almost flat despite the loss of non-abortion clients.
And there was absolutely no attempt to explain why their abortion business keeps growing faster than the federal debt despite all their supposed efforts to proliferate contraception, emergency or otherwise.
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