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A study across the Texas Panhandle, using government
statistics from 16 counties, found that the teen pregnancy rates among
13-17-year olds from 1994 through 2010 showed dramatic declines even as Planned
Parenthood Federation of America facilities in the region shut down—dwindling
from 19 family planning facilities to zero.
For decades, PPFA has publically maintained that it serves
a key healthcare role for the American public by educating teens on “safe sex,”
providing contraceptives, and reducing pregnancies. The breakthrough study titled
“A Longitudinal Analysis of PPFA and Teen Pregnancy in the Texas Panhandle”
refutes that claim. Found within a
meta-analysis of Planned Parenthood, the report states that the teen
pregnancy rate “reached its lowest point in recorded history two years after
disaffiliation of the last two remaining facilities.”
The study analyzed data obtained from the Texas Department
of State Health Services, Vital Statistics Annual Report, Table 14B, for the
years 1994 through 2010: “In 1996, the
year before opposition to Planned Parenthood began, the average teen pregnancy
rate in the 16 counties where Planned Parenthood operated facilities was 43.6
per 1,000 girls aged 13 to 17. By 2002, the rate had dropped to 28.6. In 2008,
the year the last two Planned Parenthood facilities disaffiliated from PPFA,
the teen pregnancy rate was 27.2. And in 2010, two years after the Texas
Panhandle became Planned Parenthood-free, the teen pregnancy rate had fallen to
24.1.”
The raw data gleaned from government files shows that with
a teen population stable at about 13,000, the actual number of teen pregnancies
fell from an average of 544 per year in the five years before Planned
Parenthood started closing its doors to an average of 373 in the last five
years.
PPFA’s fact sheet, Reducing Teen Pregnancy,
proposes to reduce the quantity of teen pregnancies through a number of
initiatives. To that end, it calls for initiatives that:
• Incorporate responsible, medically accurate sexuality education
and information in the schools and in the media.
• Incorporate improvements in funding for and access to family
planning services.
• Incorporate youth development programs to improve the
life options of impoverished teens.
PPFA scorns abstinence-based education and praises the
Obama administration for effectively defunding it: “In 2009, recognizing that
evidence-based sex education programs were effective in promoting sexual health
among teenagers, the Obama administration transferred funds from the
community-based Abstinence Education Program and budgeted $114.5 million to
support evidence-based sex education programs across the country.”
The report does not specifically claim that PPFA presence
in a community actually drives up teen pregnancy. The report simply states “The
Texas Panhandle statistics show conclusively that neither access to Planned
Parenthood ‘reproductive healthcare’ clinics nor PPFA ‘evidence-based, comprehensive
sex education’ is a necessary component in reducing the teen pregnancy rate.”
However, when pressed on this point, Jim Sedlak, a
recognized expert on PPFA and vice president of American Life League—the
organization that underwrote the five-part meta-study in which the Panhandle
report is contained—did point to Planned Parenthood’s business model.
“Based on the retention rates that Planned Parenthood
published routinely until the mid-1990s, it consistently lost 43 percent of its
customers annually. Today, PPFA is a $1 billion business,” said Sedlak. “The
only demographic big enough to furnish that many new customers every year is
teens and young adults who engage in frequent sex. Planned Parenthood can make
millions on preaching safe sex. It goes broke on abstinence.”
Under Obamacare, Planned Parenthood was first in line to
start receiving funds for the comprehensive sex education program—funds totaling
$375 million.
The PPFA fact
sheet also claims that “influential minorities promote unrealistic,
abstinence-only programs and parental consent requirements . . . an unrealistic
emphasis is placed on preventing adolescent sexual behavior which overlooks the
fact that sexual expression is an essential component of healthy human
development for individuals of all ages.”
Planned Parenthood argues that comprehensive sex
education, including an introduction to homosexuality and all its variations,
must start in kindergarten. From kindergarten through college, Planned
Parenthood promotes sexual rights, sexual freedom, and even dangerous sexual
acts such as anal sex and fisting.
To see where this philosophy leads, one need only look at International
Planned Parenthood Federation. It promotes
“sexual rights” for people under 18 years of age, even as young 10.
While PPFA decries the spread of HIV/AIDS it simultaneously
fights for laws protecting homosexuality and against laws requiring people who
are HIV positive to disclose that information to sex partners.
IPPF argues that laws requiring disclosure of the
potentially lethal infection to a new sexual partner violates of the sexual
rights of the HIV infected person.
So, does PPFA promote “reproductive health” or just peddle
sex?
One thing for sure: to Planned Parenthood, sexual pleasure
is more important than life itself.
Paul E. Rondeau is executive director at American Life League and
a co-author of “Planned
Parenthood Federation of America: A 5-Part Analysis of Business Practices,
Community Outcomes, and Taxpayer Funding.”
