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Kurt Mahlburg
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.
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 five per cent increase from the previous year.
“It’s been nearly two years since the US 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.
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 eight 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 per cent 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 UN, improvements in maternal mortality have stagnated in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 70 per cent 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 below.
