How To Make Abortion Less Profitable For Planned Parenthood

The Federalist, ^ | January 24, 2020 | Willis L. Krumhold

[Kaslin]

The City Pages hit, and Planned Parenthood not liking the billboards, is not just about a disagreement over a controversial issue. It’s about money.

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Two pro-life billboards were taken down in St. Paul, after the billboard stand owner—who remains unknown—threatened the billboard company, Clear Channel, that the stand owner would not renew the lease with Clear Channel unless the billboards were taken down.

One billboard gave the website and number for abortion pill reversal (877-558-0333), and another the phone number and website for women facing an unplanned pregnancy, OptionLine.org (800-712-4357). Both advertisements were taken out by Pro-Life Action Ministries (PLAM).

PLAM strategically placed the billboards right next to Planned Parenthood’s St. Paul megaclinic, which performs well more than 6,000 abortions per year. Around 40 percent of these abortions are chemically induced, via the abortion pill regimen.

City Pages, a far-left outlet based in Minneapolis, ran a hit piece on the billboards, which may have led to their removal. The City Pages article repeated false information about abortion pill reversal, characterizing the abortion pill regimen as completely safe, while claiming pill reversal is incredibly dangerous.

Actually, reversal is much less-dangerous than liberal media have suggested, and the “normal” abortion-pill regimen endangers women. And while no women have died from pill reversal, 24 women have died from the abortion pill regimen, while thousands have been injured.

It’s quite possible that the pro-life billboards were beginning to bug Planned Parenthood financially. One wonders how much the local Planned Parenthood affiliate, Planned Parenthood North Central States, coordinates with City Pages.

Planned Parenthood Prefers to Work In the Dark

Planned Parenthood operates under a franchise-franchisee model. The national organization handles marketing and broad political activities, while local franchisees, or affiliates—including Planned Parenthood of North Central States (PPNCS)—conduct day-to-day “operations.”

These local affiliates are extremely sensitive to basic economics, and are cost-sensitive. They are financially independent from the parent, and must break even on their own. If they do more than break even, they get to pay staff more and offer better benefits.

They also depend heavily on abortion. Assuming abortion only costs $500, and the margin (revenue after cost) for abortion is 20 percent—an extremely conservative estimate—the percent of affiliate revenue after expenses that comes from abortion is 35 percent. If the margin on abortion is 40 percent, which is certainly within the realm of possibility, affiliate revenue after expenses from abortion is 75 percent (click here for an explanation of how this number, which certainly wasn’t published by Planned Parenthood, was arrived at).

The affiliate revenue after expenses that comes from abortion is probably on the high end both because clinics face little competition, largely due to regulatory pressures, and because while chemical abortion costs around $500-600, surgical abortions—around 60 percent of abortions—cost around $1,000 in the first trimester alone.

Not only do clinics depend heavily on abortion for profit, the other side of the profit equation has led affiliates like PPNCS to opt for megaclinics, like the one in St. Paul, in order to achieve better economies of scale and cut costs further. According to an insider, affiliates have abortion targets and budgets, and aim to have a woman on and off the table in around 5 minutes in order to maximize clinic “productivity.”

Because of this crazy, laser-focus on abortion, Planned Parenthood franchisees do a bad job at what they claim in advertising they do—provide birth control. And because women who frequent these clinics don’t have many choices, Planned Parenthood can continue to do a substandard job at providing birth control.

In fact, Planned Parenthood’s target customer, young unmarried women who are disproportionately black American women, may help explain the high abortion rate among black Americans—which should be seen as a national crisis. Critics say this is because of a lack of access to birth control, but Planned Parenthood is the organization supposedly providing this demographic birth control access.

In other words, the City Pages hit, and Planned Parenthood not liking the billboards, is not just about a disagreement over a controversial issue. It’s about money.

What Can Lawmakers Do?

Time to crack down on the perverse profit motive. For starters, policymakers can continue to pass laws that increase the costs to Planned Parenthood affiliates. One example is a law requiring ultrasound use during the abortion procedure. This would hit franchisees’ bottom line, and make the procedure safer for women.

States should also require mandatory reporting at emergency rooms, to track how often a woman is admitted with leftover remnants of the fetus in her womb, often due to an abortion performed by a hurried doctor (with a profit motive). Clinics that send women to the E.R. should face stiff penalties, and ultimately closure.

Another example is laws that require increased oversight and warnings about chemical abortions, which Planned Parenthood is attempting to at least partially shift toward, probably because of the higher margins involved. Another solution still is more birth control providers to poor women who don’t offer or refer abortions, and thus don’t have an extreme financial incentive to guide customers toward abortion.

Finally, too many U.S. abortions are subsidized by taxpayers. That’s because, while federal Medicaid doesn’t broadly fund abortion, 16 states direct Medicaid to pay for all or most abortions. Nine of these states do so because of a court order.

In Minnesota, taxpayers fund more than 4,000 abortions per year. The Trump administration laudably ended Planned Parenthood’s access to Title X, but the big money comes from Medicaid. To the extent possible, the administration should look to crack down on federal Medicaid funding to abortion providers, and foster greater access to birth control providers who don’t provide abortion.

[Liz]

Sign seen at March for Life:

"HEY, PLANNED PARENTHOOD, GO FUND YOURSELF."

[Liz]

Remember when the "kindly, compassionate" Clintons (Bill was then-President)
assured America that abortion would be "safe, legal and rare?" Remember that?

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Oops. The kindly Clintons plumb "forgot" to mention that they
themselves opened the gates so that Planned Parenthood could traffic
(and profit) in baby body parts.

(EXCERPT--WND.COM). Then-Pres Clinton is credited w/ opening up the market in fetal body parts. Since Clinton signed the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993, “fetal-tissue research” has expanded into a federally subsidized multi-million dollar industry of selling human spare parts salvaged from abortions.

For example, the NIH budgeted $21 million in fiscal year 1999 for grants and awards for fetal tissue research. At the University of Washington, the NIH subsidizes the central laboratory for human embryology.

According to a lab notice obtained by WorldNetDaily, it “can supply tissue from normal or abnormal embryos and fetuses of desired gestational ages between 40 days to term. Specimens are obtained within minutes of passage, and tissues are aseptically identified, staged, and immediately processed according to the requirements of individual investigators.” The notice is signed by Alan G. Fantel of the department of pediatrics.

At the time, two organizations that profited from this growth industry were (the now defunct) Opening Lines, a business formerly located in West Frankfort, Illinois...... and Anatomic Gift Foundation, headquartered in Laurel, Maryland.

Opening Lines publicly gave credit to President Clinton for opening up the lucrative business in fetal tissue trade. According to Opening Lines, on January 22, 1993 (the infamous anniversary of legalized abortion---Clinton is not without an in-your-face governing style), Clinton lifted the moratorium on federal funding. “This action created a great demand for fetal tissue and has made possible the development of treatments for individuals afflicted with serious diseases and disorders,” says the Opening Lines sales brochure.

Both companies served as wholesalers for the marketing of baby body parts to researchers, drug companies, hospitals and universities. These groups harvest the baby parts from abortion clinics and ship them to their customers.

Opening Lines provides fetal tissue researchers with a “fee for service schedule,” which gives prices for each body part. For example, Opening Lines charged:

<><> $150 for a spinal column;

<><> $400 for an intact embryonic cadaver;

<><>$75 for 8-week-old baby's eyeballs (40% discount for a single eye);

<><>$150 for two arms or legs; and,

<><> $100 for the skin of a 12-week-old baby.

[Harpotoo]

Tell boys/men condoms cost 0 - $1 and girls/women that a month’s worth of birth control costs 0 - $20!

[DiogenesLamp]

Two pro-life billboards were taken down in St. Paul, after the billboard stand owner—who remains unknown—threatened the billboard company, Clear Channel, that the stand owner would not renew the lease with Clear Channel unless the billboards were taken down.

Drag this greasy piece of sh*t out into the sunlight and see if he bursts into flame like a creature of the undead.

Nobody "remains unknown" if they own real property. This man can be found and identified, and since he feels the need to put his big f***ing mouth into the discussion, he needs to suffer the consequences of publicly taking the position of being against the right to life.

People can go to the courthouse and find out who owns what. If I lived in this guy's area, I would go find out who he is and make sure the people who need to know are informed.

[antidemoncrat]

Exactly. Cut off all tax payer funding for them.

[huckfillary]

I always thought the Hyde Amendment prohibited the government funding of baby killing. So how are these penniless women paying for this?

[Liz]

On October 22, 1993, President Clinton signed into law the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1994.[11] The Act contained a new version of the Hyde Amendment that expanded the category of abortions for which federal funds are available under Medicaid to include cases of rape and incest.[12] The 2016 platform marked the first time the Democratic platform had an explicit call to repeal the Hyde Amendment.[13] On January 24, 2017, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 7, which, according to the press office of Speaker Paul Ryan, "makes the Hyde amendment permanent."[14] The bill failed to pass the Senate and did not become law.

[Amish with an attitude]

They have a conundrum, RU-486 pharmaceutical abortions are cutting into their profitability and no body parts to sell.