Planned Parenthood's Birth-Control Myth

Planned Parenthood's Birth-Control Myth - The Daily Beast: Planned Parenthood claims women get more abortions if they don’t have access to contraception—though research suggests otherwise. . . .

Planned Parenthood continues to claim that without its contraception services the abortion rate will go up. This deception smacks of a fleecing of taxpayers in an effort to promote an ideological agenda, rather than a sincere effort to help women plan families.

What is that ideology, exactly? To find out, you have to dig through Planned Parenthood’s tax forms because the group certainly isn’t going to tell you. According to its most recent tax filing, the purpose of Planned Parenthood Federation of America is to provide leadership in “[a]chieving, through informed individual choice, a U.S. population of stable size in an optimum environment; in stimulating and sponsoring relevant biomedical, socio-economic, and demographic research.”

So it is, in reality, a population-control organization. Funny, this was never mentioned in the gauzy $200,000 advertising campaign launched last week. It also doesn’t make it into the “About Us” section of the group’s website, which repeatedly claims its mission is to protect women’s health, when in fact the real mission is to keep the birth rate at whatever level the leaders believe it should be.

Author's Note: Kirsten Powers writes, "I made a serious error in reporting this column that undermines the conclusion I drew. I compared statistics on contraceptive use from a January 2011 Guttmacher Institute fact sheet to a year 2000 study on the same issue. However, I did not realize that the 2011 fact sheet derived its statistics from the year 2000 numbers, so my argument was not supported by the data. I should also note that I sent my conclusions and the relevant numbers to a Planned Parenthood spokesman before the piece posted, but he did not correct the factual issue at the time. I am deeply sorry for the error, which invalidates my piece."

Editor's note: Kirsten, I'm confused. I appreciate your commitment to veracity, but what part of the article is now invalid? If I were you, I wouldn't go so far as to say all of it is. You still have the statistics from Spain.You still have their own documentation as to the reasons women abort. You still have the statement from Planned Parenthood's 990. You still have their admission about mammograms. It's still right and proper for you to raise questions about their funding.