Planned Parenthood's 3% Abortion Myth

You'll hear this self-reported line from Planned Parenthood everywhere. It's in their annual report, it's stated on the web, during news interviews, from Cecil Richards and PP Supporters- you name it. 

But is it true? 

According to Planned Parenthood's 2014-2015 Annual Report they commit over 300,00 abortions every year. In 2014 alone (The most recent stats they give) they committed 323,999 abortions. 

When you do the math this averages out to:

887 abortions a day

37 abortions per hour

1 abortion EVERY 97 seconds

Again, Planned Parenthood commits 1 abortion every 97 seconds 

So what percentage of what Planned Parenthood really does is abortion? 

Go ahead and grab your calculator! Let's divide the number of abortions with the number of patients they see in a year.
 323,999 Abortions - Divided by 2.5 Million Patients 

= you'll get 12.9%  (go ahead - please try for yourself) 

So that means: 

1 out of every 8 patients that walks into PP will undergo an abortion

Not 1 out of 33 like PP claims

Do you wonder where this 3% statistic comes from...and why so many people know it?  Like any $1.3 billion-dollar corporation, PP has a marketing department responsible for promoting its services. Through various communications, they make sure their self-reported statistic is broadcast to the world. 

Such cracked reasoning could be used to obscure the purpose of any organization.*

The sponsors of the New York City Marathon could count each small cup of water they hand out (some 2 million cups, compared with 45,000 runners) and say they are mainly in the hydration business.

Or Major League Baseball teams could say that they sell about 20 million hot dogs and play 2,430 games in a season, so baseball is only .012 percent of what they do.

Supporters of Planned Parenthood want to use its health services as leverage to preserve its abortions, as if you can’t get one without the other.

Of course, this is nonsense.

Slate’s Rachael Larimore, the left-leaning online magazine’s conservative senior editor, called this the “most meaningless abortion statistic ever"

In the case of Planned Parenthood they count every service equal ($10 preg. test the same as a $1500 abortion procedure) and call it a "Discreet Clinical Interaction." 

 They then divide each "discreet clinical interaction" (STI tests, preg test, pap smear, exam etc.) by the number of abortions they offer.
So when you divide 9.4 Million Services by 323,999 abortions they get = 3%. 

"When all services are counted equally, abortion procedures do account for 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s total services.

But there are obvious differences between these services. For example, a first trimester abortion can cost up to $1,500, according to the Planned Parenthood Web site. Yet an emergency contraceptive pill costs around $45 and a urine pregnancy test costs around $10 at a pharmacy. An abortion is a different type of procedure than a vasectomy, or testing for sexually transmitted infections or diseases, or a vaccine for human papilloma virus (HPV), and so forth.

While each service is listed separately, many clients received multiple services. A woman may get a pregnancy test, birth control and a pap smear, but she would be counted three times, once for each service, in the annual report." (read more)

You can see why this math is completely bogus!  Even if every woman that walked into PP got an abortion service - they would also count the pregnancy test, the STI test and additional contraceptives in their annual report. Thus even if 100% of their patients underwent an abortion PP would claim that abortion is only 25% of what they do.

Planned Parenthood also claims they do other necessary services such as "access to mammograms" and PAP smears. But in reality when you do the numbers PP accounts for only: 

1.8% of the Nation's Breast Exams

.97% of the Nation's PAP Tests 

(See Planned Parenthood's Services Page for more info) 

While Planned Parenthood's 323, 999 abortions account for 30.6% of the Nations Abortions 

(Guttmacher Institute - 926,200 Abortions committed in US -2014)

Watch this Video

It's easy to see what Planned Parenthood is an Abortion Corporation. And why the Washington Post – no friend to the pro-life movement – lobbed the first salvo at Planned Parenthood’s unbreachable – and equally absurd – assertion, bluntly concluding that Planned Parenthood is “misleading,” “using meaningless and incomplete comparisons to make their argument, and the public should be wary . . . .”

Sources:WA Post Fact Checker, PP's 2014-2015 Annual Report, Slate - "Most Meaningless Statistic Ever", Life News, Guttmacher Institute - Induced abortions in the US