by Connor Semelsberger
To borrow from an old saying, nothing can be certain except for death and taxpayer funding for the abortion industry. At the request of pro-life members of Congress, the Government Accountability Office released the latest round of data detailing how much taxpayer funding goes to Planned Parenthood and other international abortion organizations. From 2019 through 2021, Planned Parenthood in the U.S. received $1.7 billion in taxpayer subsidies.
Congress has been requesting GAO reports on Planned Parenthood’s public financing dating back to 1994. Over the last 29 years, American taxpayers have been on the hook for at least $7.9 billion in subsidies for Planned Parenthood’s dominance in the abortion industry. This all while the number of Planned Parenthood facilities has been declining yet its share of the abortion market has been increasing.
When the GAO began publishing these reports in 1994, Planned Parenthood was receiving $163 million a year while performing around 9% of all abortions in the U.S. Now, as the federal government continues to increase the amount of taxpayer funding Planned Parenthood receives, it is now performing over 40% of all abortions in the U.S.
The American Life League publishes annual surveys of the amount and kind of Planned Parenthood facilities in operation. The total number has been declining since 1995; however, the share of facilities that perform abortions is increasing.
In 2021, Planned Parenthood had 567 facilities, of which 391 performed abortions. Most notable is the increase in chemical abortion-only (abortion pill) facilities, which now outnumber the facilities that perform surgical abortions. In 2021, American taxpayers paid an average of $1.4 million to each Planned Parenthood facility that performs abortions.
Despite many positive executive actions to curb federal funding for the abortion industry under the Trump administration, Planned Parenthood still hauled in over $550 million each year from 2019-2021. One of the signature policy victories for the Trump administration was the Protect Life Rule, which properly interpreted the Title X Family Planning statute to require complete physical and financial separation between Title X clinics and abortion facilities. Planned Parenthood and other organizations receive Title X dollars specifically for the distribution of contraceptives and other family planning, not for abortions.
After a lengthy court battle, this new rule went into effect in 2019. Rather than comply with the new standards and separate its business into abortion facilities and family planning clinics, Planned Parenthood chose abortion over helping women in need of family planning services and backed out of the Title X program altogether. In doing so, it sacrificed an estimated $60 million a year. Many abortion-friendly states stepped in to help make up the lost federal funds, and as this GAO report shows, Planned Parenthood more than made up the difference in Medicaid funds.
In 2018, according to a previous GAO report, Planned Parenthood received $467 million from Medicaid. Its Medicaid funding jumped dramatically to around $530 million in both 2020 and 2021, an increase of $63 million each year.
Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood are not an annual grant like the Title X program, but rather as individual Planned Parenthood facilities perform Medicaid-eligible services like sexually transmitted disease tests or contraception prescriptions for individuals, they are reimbursed through Medicaid. This figure is constantly changing, depending on how many people on Medicaid use Planned Parenthood and what services they use it for. In the last few years, Medicaid reimbursements to the abortion giant have been trending upward.
Interestingly, in November 2020, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld actions from Texas and Louisiana that prohibited Planned Parenthood from being a Medicaid-eligible provider after it was revealed it bought and sold aborted fetal tissue for profit. This was the first time that any state was able to successfully cut out Planned Parenthood completely from the Medicaid program. Despite this, the abortion chain was still able to haul in $530 million from Medicaid in 2021. This shows that no matter what federal or state policies are in place, if Planned Parenthood is still an eligible Medicaid provider in any state, it will continue to receive millions of dollars a year in taxpayer subsidies.
This large increase in Medicaid funding starting in 2020 and 2021 could have been due to Planned Parenthood’s increased involvement in providing COVID-19 services and the increased federal match for Medicaid established in the CARES Act, which was a response to the pandemic. Another CARES Act program, the Paycheck Protection Program was yet another funding source that Planned Parenthood tapped into. That program provided taxpayer funding for businesses to keep paying their employees during the pandemic shutdowns.
Despite Sen. Marco Rubio working with pro-life members in Congress to ensure the text of the CARES Act made clear that Planned Parenthood and its affiliates would not be eligible to receive Paycheck Protection Program loans, 38 Planned Parenthood affiliates applied for, received, and eventually were forgiven $90 million in loans. This was only possible because of a major failure by the Small Business Administration to not follow the clear intent of Congress to exclude Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood is an organization that has a known eugenics past, has proved to choose abortion ideology over serving its patients with family planning needs, and openly flouts federal law to receive taxpayer-guaranteed loans, and yet our elected representatives think it necessary to underwrite its bottom line. If only pro-life pregnancy resource centers had an ounce of the public backing and financial support as Planned Parenthood, they would be able to serve even more expecting mothers and their unborn children.
Instead, the federal government has turned a blind eye to the physical threats of violence and vandalism these pro-life centers face, and some members of Congress openly attack them with visceral lies about the services they provide. In the end, no matter how many political or legislative victories the pro-life movement may have, the abortion industrial complex will be alive and well so long as the American taxpayer is forced to prop up this barbaric industry.
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Connor Semelsberger is the government relations manager for The Heritage Foundation.=
Photo “Planned Parenthood Building” by hattiesburgmemory. CC BY 2.0.
