A critical evaluation of the National Review article "The Truth about Planned Parenthood"
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443607/planned-parenthood-house-report-revelations
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House speaker Paul Ryan announced yesterday that, as part of the Republican Congress's effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, the majority party will also aim to defund Planned Parenthood.
Source for Ryan's statement: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4641709/ryan-defunding-pp
Planned Parenthood's annual report for 2014-2015 says that about 43% ($553M of $1,296M) of revenue comes from federal funding. (https://www.plannedparenthood.org/files/2114/5089/0863/2014-2015_PPFA_Annual_Report_.pdf ). The CBO estimated about 85% of federal funding is from medicaid reimbursements with most of the rest coming from Title X of the Health Services Act (https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/costestimate/ltrpermanentdefundplannedparenthood.pdf ). However, part of medicaid costs are covered by states, so denying federal funding wouldn't end all government funding to Planned Parenthood, unless each state decides to do so. For example, Texas recently attemped to pass legislation (Dec 2016) to cut state funds: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2016/12/21/texas_purports_to_cut_planned_parenthood_funding_which_is_illegal.html
This news has caused immediate backlash from pro-abortion activists and politicians, many of whom continue to assert that the organization does "so much more" than simply offer abortion services.
Since the author seems to be implying the sole purpose of Planned Parenthood and affiliates is to perform abortions, here's a count of the list of services provided (from the Annual Report, above) for the last reported year. Abortions make up about 3.4% of the total.
STI/STD Testing & Treatment ----- STI Tests, Women and Men: 3,533,522 Genital Warts (HPV) Treatments: 32,233 HIV Tests, Women and Men: 651,695 Other Treatments: 699 Total: 4,218,149 Contraception ----- Reversible Contraception Clients, Women: 2,009,307 Emergency Contraception Kits: 931,589 Female Sterilization Procedures: 718 Vasectomy Clients: 3,445 Total: 2,945,059 Cancer Screening and Prevention ----- Pap Tests: 271,539 HPV Vaccinations: 24,063 Breast Exams/Breast Care: 363,803 Colposcopy Procedures: 20,736 LEEP Procedures: 1,621 Cryotherapy Procedures: 446 Total: 682,208 Other Women's Health Services ----- Pregnancy Tests: 1,172,989 Prenatal Services: 17,419 Total: 1,190,408 Abortion Services ----- Abortion Procedures: 323,999 Other Services ----- Family Practice Services, Women and Men: 33,060 Adoption Referrals to Other Agencies: 2,024 Urinary Tract Infections Treatments: 55,912 Other Procedures, Women and Men: 4,763 Total: 95,759 ----- Total services: 9,455,582
But this latest news about the defunding effort comes just one day after the House Select Panel on Infant Lives released its final report, ...
"House Select Panel on Infant Lives" will be referred to as The Panel from now on.
The report is available in two forms, either from the Jan 4th announcement, 471 pages long, ( announce: https://energycommerce.house.gov/news-center/letters/select-investigative-panel-final-report , pdf: https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/documents/Select_Investigative_Panel_Final_Report.pdf ) or the Jan 3 announcement, at 485 pages (announce: https://energycommerce.house.gov/news-center/press-releases/select-investigative-panel-releases-final-report , pdf: https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/114/Analysis/20161230Select_Panel_Final_Report.pdf ). Note that the earlier one has 14 more pages and includes Chapter XI.
The Jan 4 announcement page is worth reading. Statements by Republican committee members are given. The chairman Marsha Blackburn is the only person to make a statement of integrity, pursuing the noble goal of protecting women and children: "... It is my hope that our recommendations will result in some necessary changes within both the abortion and fetal tissue procurement industries. Our hope is that these changes will both protect women and their unborn children ..." Every other committee member implies, in various ways, that the purpose of this investigation is to find Planned Parenthood guilty of wrongdoing:
Joseph R. Pitts opens with: "The Select Investigative Panel has worked hard to uncover the illegal and highly repulsive activities of the organizations involved ..."
Andy Harris opens with: "The Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives succeeded in uncovering shameful practices ..."
Sean Duffy didn't even bother mentioning women (or children).
As this is not a court of law, the House committee Republicans can discount presumed innocence, and apparently, impartiality.
... revealing in damning detail the immense amount of illegal activity Planned Parenthood carried out in order to profit further from its abortion business and the remains of aborted children.
Specific claims below.
Congress created the House panel in the fall of 2015 after a series of undercover videos filmed by the Center for Medical Progress revealed footage of Planned Parenthood officials callously haggling over the prices of fetal tissue and discussing the practices used to obtain particular organs that would bring the most profit to the organization. After a year and a half of investigation into the organization's practices, the panel has unveiled extensive evidence showing that Planned Parenthood profited illegally from transferring the fetal tissue of aborted babies to other groups for research purposes, violating several federal and state laws in the process.
The GOP website has a detailed timeline for those interested ( https://www.gop.gov/solution_content/plannedparenthood/ ). Investigation began July 2015. The House panel was created October 2015, as an almost purely paritsan creation (there were only 3 party defectors on either side http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2015/roll538.xml ).
Other claims here addressed below.
Despite the fact that Planned Parenthood and its political allies expended millions of dollars in a campaign to deny wrongdoing and portray the investigation as a political witch hunt ...
I am unsure where this "millions of dollars" number comes from. Planned Parenthood did commission Fusion GPS to analyze the videos released by CMP group (12 hours of video as stated in their report: http://ppfa.pr-optout.com/ViewAttachment.aspx?EID=mr9WXYw4u2IxYnni1dBRVk3HDyuhhkPMnFMCvK5fVC8%3d ) so this, and any other related costs (e.g., attorneys) might be substantial. However, what's the alternative? Not responding to requests from The Panel?
... the panel has compiled 418 pages of compelling evidence that the group committed extensive wrongdoing.
Minor clarification: the page numbering starts on page 59 of the pdf, which explains the discrepencies from the numbers listed above.
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Here are four of the most alarming pieces of evidence from the report: First, Planned Parenthood affiliates illegally profited from the transfer of fetal tissue, as they repeatedly received compensation despite the fact that their clinicians never participated in harvesting or packaging the tissue in question.
This is a substantial claim, worth repeating: "Planned Parenthood affiliates ... repeatedly received compensation despite the fact that their clinicians never participated in harvesting or packaging the tissue in question." However, there is no supporting evidence for this claim in The Panel report. Chapter VIII (E)(14) lists job descriptions of Planned Parenthood staff, pointing out that no job description mentions tasks associated with fetal tissue, but this hardly seems related to receiving compensation. Additionally, none of the criminal or regulatory referrels of Chapter IV mention receiving compensation for work not performmed. There is one criminal referral claiming four Planned Parenthood clinics in California profitted from selling fetal tissue (more on this in the fourth claim below).
In practice, a tissue-procurement organization (TPO) such as StemExpress would partner with Planned Parenthood to obtain fetal tissue to then "donate" to researchers. (In reality, StemExpress, too, broke the law; it has been referred for criminal charges in multiple states for profiting from the sale of fetal tissue.)
These claims are most of the substance of the report, that universities or companies profitted from selling fetal tissue. In fact, this is claim of most of the criminal referrals (six of the fifteen claims are against StemExpress).
StemExpress hired its own clinicians to work within Planned Parenthood centers, and these StemExpress employees conducted all of the work related to harvesting, preparing, and shipping the fetal tissue. However, internal StemExpress documents reveal that Planned Parenthood accepted compensation for costs its clinics supposedly incurred in the procurement of this tissue. Thus, it is evident that Planned Parenthood received monetary compensation for work it did not do; in other words, the group profited from fetal-tissue transfer, which is illegal. In fact, these TPOs explicitly marketed themselves to Planned Parenthood affiliates as potential partners that would increase the clinics' bottom lines.
As mentioned above, there is no evidence Planned Parenthod received compensation for work it did not do. More on profit in the fourth claim below.
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Second, Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers modified abortion procedures in order to procure intact fetuses ...
This is false. At no point was the goal to obtain "intact fetuses," and no such claim is made in The Panel report. Additonally, as discussed in Chapter VII Sec F, modification of abortian procedures is allowed for donation purposes. Also, the modifications made were typically changing the order of some events, within the realm of acceptable procedures.
... and obtain higher profits from selling those fetal organs to researchers.
The profit claim is address below.
Abortion procedures modified in this way greatly increase the chance of an infant's being born alive, and it is unclear what happens to infants in these circumstances. Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, when testifying before Congress last year, insisted that she had never heard of any such events occurring. However, Planned Parenthood clinic workers testified before the panel that such procedures do take place and that, scientifically speaking, they have a much higher likelihood of causing an infant to be born alive.
This claim may have merit. The charges raised in the criminal referral are specific to a clinic in Texas, and specific to late term abortions.
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Third, the panel found that Planned Parenthood cooperated with TPOs such as StemExpress to infringe upon the privacy of vulnerable women, in violation of the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which guarantees women the right to both privacy and informed consent. In order to profit from the sale of particular fetal organs, Planned Parenthood disclosed details about specific patients and their pregnancies to TPO clinicians ...
This is a distortion of the truth. Planned Parenthood is legally obligated to follow HIPAA, and also obligated to protect personally identifiable health information (aka Protected Health Information, PHI). Partners, such as StemExpress, would benefit from disclosure of some of this information -- things like background demographics, age, etc. Consent forms were designed and used by Planned Parenthood and partners for women to release such information. Thus, Planned Parenthood was following the law.
As Planned Parenthood was following the law, the claim made by The Panel report (and criminal referral) is that the consent forms were inadequate and manipulative. In my opinion, this is a frivolous claim, but whether or not this has legal bearing remains to be seen.
You can view the consent form used at http://imgur.com/YPeWOjk or the original Exhibit 8.34 from page 169 of an approximately 180 MB pdf (https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/files/documents/Chapter_VIII_Exhibits.pdf).
... so that they could persuade certain women to have an abortion if their fetuses could be sold to researchers for a higher profit.
This is unsubstantiated, and no such claim is made in The Panel report. Of note, the consent form also requires the donor to assert she had previously decided to have an abortion as a condition of a accepting fetal tissue donation.
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Fourth, though the national Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) organization had a policy on the books requiring that affiliates comply with federal law on the transfer of fetal tissue (in other words, not accept financial compensation for tissue transfers), several affiliates failed to follow this policy and accepted "reimbursement" for costs not incurred.
The federal law mentioned in The Panel report is The Unitied States Code of Law, Title 42, Sec. 289g-2 ( https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2010-title42/html/USCODE-2010-title42-chap6A-subchapIII-partH-sec289g-2.htm ) which says:
It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.
That's all the law says on the matter: "don't sell fetal tissue across state lines." The term "valuable consideration" is clarified to explain that compensation for related expenses is acceptable. Federal law defers to individual states for any finer restrictions. As mentioned in The Panel report, California does have related legislation which closely mirrors the federal law, California Health and Safety Code Section 125320 (http://codes.findlaw.com/ca/health-and-safety-code/hsc-sect-125320.html ):
(a) A person may not knowingly, for valuable consideration, purchase or sell embryonic or cadaveric fetal tissue for research purposes pursuant to this chapter.
(b) For purposes of this section, “valuable consideration” does not include reasonable payment for the removal, processing, disposal, preservation, quality control, storage, transplantation, or implantation of a part.
(c) Embryonic or cadaveric fetal tissue may be donated for research purposes pursuant to this chapter.
Other than these points, the law has little to say about profitting from selling fetal tissue (probably because there's nothing criminal about the activity).
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The Panel report states (Chapter VII (E)(7)), as evidence supporting the claim that Planned Parenthood profitted from the sale of fetal tissue
"Second, The CMP undercover videos revealed a "wink and a nod" attitude by PPFA executives who seemed to communicate that fetal tissue programs help with revenue but don't get caught because the headlines would be a disaster.
The Fusion GPS report (linked above) on the CMP videos is worth reading, and only 10 pages long. It was released in August 2015, before The Panel committee was even formed. A relevant excerpt from the Fusion GPS report :
This is consistent with Fusion GPS analysts' assessment of the "full footage" videos. In all four interviews, CMP operatives repeatedly bring up compensation, often trying to bait Planned Parenthood representatives into making mercenary statements or naming a higher price for donated tissue. In the California 2015 video, the female interviewer explicitly tells Planned Parenthood representatives that the compensation that they requested for fetal tissue donation is "way too low." In the Colorado video, she tells Planned Parenthood representatives that she wants to pay "top dollar."
And the concluding remarks, which The Panel ignored:
The numerous errors, discrepancies, and omissions in the CMP transcripts render them useless as "evidence." They also cannot be relied upon in official inquiries as a credible text record of what is said in the videos.
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In order to show that Planned Parenthood violated the law, it is necessary to show that the compensation received was greater than the costs incurred -- that is, that they profitted from the sale of fetal tissue (across state lines). Large sections of The Panel report are spent evaluating accounting records and practices of various organizations. Time and again it is shown that Planned Parenthood made reasonable efforts to follow the law of not-profitting (StemExpress is a different matter) and The Panel report sought to construe accounting records in a way to condemn Planned Parenthood (the discredited Fusion GPS report is frequently cited).
Once PPFA learned of these violations, the group canceled the policy instead of forcing compliance, and altered its oversight procedures in order to enable those violations to continue.
Once PPFA learned that accounting practice could be weaponized against them, they stopped accepting reimbursement (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/63b645f843614e0da49d9c8184359e92/planned-parenthood-forgo-payment-fetal-tissue-programs ).
As outlined above, "those violations" are generally anti-abortion propaganda. Whether anything comes of the criminal referrals remains to be seen; the Texas case I mention above was sent early December 2016. (And a minor note: few claims are in The Panel report are aimed at Planned Parenthood, for the most part these are critical of associated businesses like StemExpress, which The Panel seems to have a particular vendetta against.) Additionally, there have already been a number of investigations that have determined Planned Parenthood has followed the law:
Massachusetts (https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/07/29/healey-mass-planned-parenthood-fully-compliant-with-law/Fc6pYYrY1ONGQvRTEqkWHK/story.html )
Pennsylvania (http://www.politicspa.com/doh-planned-parenthood-cleared-of-any-wrongdoing/68618/ )
Missouri (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/30/us/planned-parenthood-fetal-tissue-missouri.html )
Some states with Planned Parenthood clinics do not have any clinics that participate in any fetal tissue donation programs -- such as South Dakota -- and thus any claims made by The Panel report do not apply. Planned Parenthood has consistently shown that following the law is a priorty.
Today's outcry over the renewed effort to defund Planned Parenthood is based on a lie: that Planned Parenthood is merely an innocuous non-profit that exists only to serve low-income women across America.
Men and women of any income bracket can receive healthcare at Planned Parenthood clinics.
Perhaps the group does some good.
Yes, see the statistics I posted at the start of this critique.
But any organization that commits such barbaric practices for years — and systemically lies to cover up its profiting from the remains of aborted children — does not deserve a cent of federal money. In fact, it deserves to be shut down.
I think too often when debating abortion a point of common agreement is dismissed: no one wants women to go through the ordeal of having an abortion. But limiting access to abortions increases the number of abortions at later gestational periods, and other unintended side effects (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780732/ ). Instead of taking an absolute stance against institutions that provide women's healthcare, pro-life supporters should advocate for easier access to better healthcare, which lowers both unplanned pregnancies and abortions (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-burkhart/access-to-contraception-a_b_7595654.html , or http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/science/colorados-push-against-teenage-pregnancies-is-a-startling-success.html ).