Last month, the non-profit released its 2014-2015 annual report, detailing what it believes are its top achievements – of which abortion is included, of course. Planned Parenthood's new report brags about prevailing in the court system, describing victories in Indiana, Louisiana and Wisconsin, in which it overcame proposed restrictions on abortions, as well as its success in blocking legislation in Iowa that would have banned webcam abortions.
Webcam abortions, or tele-abortions, involve a method in which women are allowed to abort their babies without a physician present. Instead, a "secure drawer" is opened remotely by a doctor at another location, which then dispenses an abortion-inducing drug. The procedure is banned in 18 states for safety reasons, as abortion drugs sometimes cause life-threatening health effects, including "hemorrhaging, bleeding, sepsis, even loss of future fertility," Natural News reported last October.
Women shouldn't be inconvenienced by seeing a doctor, says Planned Parenthood
These side effects are dangerous with a doctor present, let alone without. Yet, Planned Parenthood argues that had the ban gone into effect, women would have had to suffer the inconvenience of traveling back and forth for doctor visits.
"Had this ban gone into effect, many women would have had to take multiple trips of up to 400 miles to access safe, legal abortion, as more than one-third of Iowans live in rural areas," the non-profit said.
Iowa was the first state in which Planned Parenthood started performing webcam abortions in 2008 – killing more than 7,000 babies in this way since then. The practice was threatened in 2013 when the Iowa Board of Medicine "passed standards that require physicians to perform a physical examination of the patient in person and to be with the patient when the abortion-inducing drug is taken," reports The Daily Signal.
Upset by their inability to perform webcam abortions, the nonprofit took the Iowa Board of Medicine to court, and the Iowa Supreme Court sided with Planned Parenthood, ruling 6–0 that the regulations were somehow "unconstitutional."
$1.4 billion in net assets
A former Planned Parenthood employee, turned whistle-blower, accused the non-profit of defrauding the Medicaid system as it routinely billed abortion-related services including ultrasounds, office visits and medication.
The whistle-blower alleged that tele-abortions were just another way for the organization to make money on a "shoestring budget with little medical involvement."
Planned Parenthood received more heat last year than usual, but you won't see the controversy reflected in its report, which reveals that the agency still managed to obtain more than $553 million dollars in taxpayer funding – more than 40 percent of which comes from government health services, grants and reimbursements, reports The Blaze.
The non-profit's total net assets for 2014 exceeded $1.4 billion. However, while government donations increased, Planned Parenthood's clientele is on the decline.
"They lost a significant share of their patients, provided fewer actual medical services, spent far more money on other things, made less profit, and became even more dependent on government funding," said Jamie Hall, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation.
The number of abortions it performed slightly decreased from 327,653 in 2014 to 323,999 in 2015.
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