From large foundations to smaller groups to individuals, PP solicits donations and frequently gets them.
Yet not all are from people wishing to promote abortion. Several polls show PP is held in higher regard than you’d expect based on the proportion of people who are pro-life Many people, regardless of what they think of abortion, believe in what they understand PP’s non-abortion mission to be: providing low-income women with women’s health and family planning services.
In its 2019 Annual Report, PP has almost $245 million of revenue in excess of expenses – more than double the $98.5 million reported in 2017. We would call that a profit if this weren’t a non-profit corporation. That and the high pay of its executives suggest that charity dollars might be more effectively sent elsewhere – especially locally.
Alternatives
Community Health Centers, Rural Health Clinics, and Other Affordable Clinics
All our listings on alternative places to get services for low-income people can also be alternatives to give financial donations. The centers (and local chains of centers) usually do need those donations.
The same point about the importance of researching them first applies. This may also bring up advantages to specific local alternatives over specific PP centers.
Most will have the advantage of being more comprehensive in providing medical services. All will have the advantage of being locally run, rather than a large national organization. To a lot of donors, that might be a major selling point: their money has more impact when it’s local than when it goes into a national pool.
Title X clinics
You can check the list and vet the individual clinics to see if they’d be places you’d be comfortable persuading local people and groups to donate to instead of PP.
What Services Does PP Actually Provide?
There’s a widespread misconception that PP provides mammograms, but it doesn’t. See our page on mammograms.
PP centers vary widely in what they actually provide. In our listings, you can click on the PP center to get to that center’s own web page on PP’s site. See also our blog post: Quickly Documenting What PP Offers.
You may find some donors to a specific PP center or affiliate startled to discover that the center doesn’t offer as much as they thought it did; if so, that may be a way to point them in the direction of more comprehensive places.
For those thinking of donating to the national U.S. PP, they should know: there are only around 600 centers, several of which double up at the same location, so there are fewer than 600 locations. You needn’t take our word for it; that’s how many centers PP lists on their website, as seen on the individual state pages added up.
Yet there are thousands of Community Health Centers, Rural Health Centers, and other clinics that serve those of low income. You’ll likely find a chain of such clinics in your area; most of our listings of PP locations are matched with many CHCs.
PP itself gives its annual numbers as 2.1 million helped with contraception and 4.5 million with STD testing – that barely scratches the surface nation-wide.
See statement in the video: Le$$ Care, No Matter What
Then-president Cecile Richards’ statement that PP is the largest is nowhere near accurate if “women’s reproductive health care” is taken literally and in its full breadth. Only if “women’s reproductive healthcare” is a euphemism for abortion does the statement become accurate. But many people would understand her to mean all health care involving the female reproductive system, and so they’re misled.
Problems with PP That Alternatives Probably Don’t Have
Child Sexual Abuse
For more on PP’s negative impact, see Aiding Abusers: Planned Parenthood’s Cover-up of Childhood Sexual Abuse.
Racism
In June of 2020, over 300 present and former employees of PP in Greater New York published an open letter alleging bullying and racist actions by the CEO of that affiliate; a separate letter focused on racism in the organization. Among changes in response, PP removed the name of Margaret Sanger from its Manhattan Center in New York, due to her eugenicist and therefore racist views. Buzzfeed reports on an internal audit found “Black employees at Planned Parenthood’s national wing feel that they have been held to a different standard than the organization’s white employees and that they are often expected to work more and given less leeway.”
Treatment of Employees
PP is weak about offering its own employees maternity leave. See Planned Parenthood is Accused of Mistreating Pregnant Employees. Also, Planned Parenthood has a History of Trying to Beat Back Labor Unions.
An Arizona jury unanimously awarded $3 million to a former director of three Planned Parenthood clinics for being terminated as a whistle-blower. PP apparently responded to evidence of shoddy medical practices by firing the person reporting them.
Abortion Prevention?
On the idea that PP reduces abortions with its contraception work, see Does Planned Parenthood Reduce Abortions by Preventing Pregnancies?
To establish PP isn’t merely available for abortions but that counselors try to talk women into them who might not otherwise get them, see Former Abortion Workers Reveal ‘Abortion Counseling’ is Really Manipulation and Planned Parenthood Discourages Options other than Abortion, Say Former Workers.
More Resources
U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities fact sheet – Planned Parenthood: Setting the Record Straight.