Planned Parenthood’s Federal Bailout
Posted on | January 22, 2010 | 17 Comments
The nation’s largest abortion provider will be opening a new office in Fitchburg, Mass. — Da Tech Guy’s hometown — thanks to your tax dollars:
FITCHBURG — The Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts will open an office on Main Street in Fitchburg this spring, with the goal of reducing the area’s high teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease rates, according to the agency’s chief executive officer, Dianne Luby. . . .
“We want to be on Main Street in Fitchburg. We want to be in a location that’s easily accessible along major transportation routes, where people will be able to get high-quality care in a nicely redone office space,” Luby said. . . .
Services will be provided at no cost to those who cannot pay, Luby said. . . .
Abortion services will not be offered, because Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts is opening the Fitchburg office using federal grant money it received in December, which carries the stipulation that abortions will not be provided, Luby said. (Emphasis added.)
Bovine excrement. The new office won’t provide abortions, but you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll provide referrals to Planned Parenthood’s abortion services elsewhere.
Beyond that, a basic principle of economics is that money is fungible. If Planned Parenthood gets a $1 million federal grant, that’s $1 million they don’t have to raise from their own donor base. And the fact is that contributions to Planned Parenthood have been down, in part because of the collapse of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme:
The left-leaning Picower Foundation gave away almost $213 million since 1999, according to a philanthropy database.
The giant foundation had the misfortune to choose Madoff to manage its more than $1 billion in assets.
A sizeable chunk of its funding has gone to abortion groups, including NARAL ($3.2 million), Center for Reproductive Rights ($2.5 million), Planned Parenthood ($2.4 million), and Center for Reproductive Law and Policy ($625,000).
So giving federal grant money to Abortion, Inc. — let’s not mince words about what Planned Parenthood really is – is a very timely bailout.
And why was it so important for Planned Parenthood to have a clinic in Fitchburg, Mass.? There are a growing number of Hispanic immigrants — the city’s population was 15% Hispanic in 2006, according to a Census estimate — and Hispanics have higher teen-pregnancy rates.
As I’ve explained before, I have a deep suspicion toward “teen pregnancy crisis” alarmists. Teen pregnancy rates are now actually much lower than they were in the 1950s, the Golden Age of Family Values. The problem, as Maggie Gallagher has pointed out, is not an increase of teen pregnancy but a decline of marriage:
“What we have called our ‘teen pregnancy’ crisis is not really about teenagers. Nor is it really about pregnancy. It is about the decline of marriage. . . .
“What has changed most in recent decades is not who gets pregnant, but who gets married . . . The single biggest change in recent decades has been the declining proportion of pregnant single teens who marry.”
In point of fact, according to official data (Powerpoint download) Massachusetts is below the U.S. average in both its overall fertility rate (55.6 Mass. vs. 66.7 U.S.) and its teen birth rate (21.7 Mass. vs. 40.4 U.S.). The total fertility rate (average lifetime births per woman) in Massachusetts is 1.74 – which is 17% below the “replacement level” of 2.1 – and if it weren’t for pockets of higher fertility like the Hispanics of Fitchburg, the state’s demographic decline would be even more stark.
Instead of funding Planned Parenthood’s misanthropic agenda in an unsubtle effort to suppress Hispanic birth rates, Massachusetts ought to be encouraging marriage. But the only kind of marriage Massachusetts cares about now is gay marriage, and so Planned Parenthood gets a federal grant for an “easily accessible” Fitchburg office.
The irony? One of the reasons Scott Brown is now the 41st vote in the Senate is because Martha Coakley lashed herself to the mast in support of federally-funded abortion, inciting the hostility of working-class Catholics, which was why the “bellwether” town of Fitchburg went 59% for Brown.
Pro-life wins elections, and yet tax money pays for the Culture of Death.
UPDATE: Dan Collins calls my attention to these statistics:
The Planned Parenthood Federation of America has released its annual report for fiscal year 2007-2008. The document shows the nation’s largest abortion business is getting bigger as it showed an increase of five percent more abortions and increased taxpayer funding.
According to Planned Parenthood’s latest report, abortions increased to 305,310 abortions up from 289,750 in 2006. . . .
The total government grants and contracts received by PPFA affiliates from government sources including state, local and federal governments, increased from $337 million to $350 million. (Emphasis added.)
Meanwhile, Da Tech Guy reports a backlash from the people of Fitchburg:
Six members of the City Council voted Thursday to draft a resolution urging the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts to abandon its plan to locate in Fitchburg, after the organization announced plans to open an office on Main Street earlier this week. . . .
State Rep. Stephen DiNatale signed on to the late-filed petition calling for a resolution, and said he planned to sit down with Planned Parenthood officials and explain to them why Fitchburg is not the right community for them to come to. . . .
“We do not need them on Main Street,” DiNatale said.
Last Sunday, I talked to Rep. DiNatale at St. Anthony of Padua Church. He’s a pro-life, blue-collar Catholic Democrat who understands the importance of representing the people who elected him — and most of those people voted against Martha Coakley’s Culture of Death agenda.

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