In a stunning new annual report, Planned Parenthood of Western Washington (PPWW) reveals that it saw a significant drop in customers in 2007 ... with one major exception.
The total number of "medical visits" fell 15%, from 150,000 in 2006, to 127,000 in 2007.
The number of emergency contraception sales - a significant source of largely illegal revenue - fell 13%. Government records show a $1m drop in revenue from Medicaid billings for emergency contraception.
And their number of Take Charge patient exams actually fell 25%, from just under 70,000 to just over 50,000. The Take Charge program has been the major factor behind PPWW's doubling in size and revenue under the Bush Administration. Again, state Medicaid records show a $1.5m drop in reimbursements for oral contraception. Their extraordinary - and again largely illegal - profits from reselling all forms of contraception at a 3 to 4 times purchase price even fell, from $9.6 million to $7 million.
Even more dramatically, the number of "Pregnancy Visits" fell a startling 50%, from just under 32,000 to just over 16,000.
Their number of "Tests and treatments for Sexually Transmitted Infections" also fell 50%.
With this drop in clients and revenue line items, you would expect their program revenue to have taken a hit from the 2006 level of $22.5 million.
And you would expect the number of abortions to have declined also, right?
But you would be wrong on both counts. Very, very wrong.
Program revenue stayed pretty much flat. How did they do that? Well, we don't know for sure. But we have a partial explanation.
The only number that didn't go down was the number of abortions performed. In fact, that number jumped a shocking 16% from 2006 to 2007, to a record 9,059.
It seems that regardless which direction all the other numbers move, one thing that is constant with PPWW is that their number of abortions goes up.
We have noted on this blog that their number of abortions has been rising at 11% per year despite all their claims that "no-one does more to reduce the need for abortion" than Planned Parenthood, and their repeated promise that distributing emergency contraception was going to result in hundreds of thousands of fewer abortions across the country.
But now they are actually killing 50% more babies than they were just 3 years ago!
How Do They Do More Abortions With Fewer Clients?
We have asked PPWW about these stunning figures, but they have refused to comment, so we are left to speculate.
The most obvious question is: how are they doing 16% more abortions with 50% less "Pregnancy Visits"? Now almost 60% of all pregnancy visits end in abortion. Three years previously, just 18% of pregnancy visits ended in abortion.
Our best guess is as follows: historically abortion clinics like PP have women come in when they are pregnant for a pregnancy test and a counseling session. That counts as 1 visit. Then they would schedule an abortion, previously all surgical. That's a second visit. Then some of those women would come in for a followup. Third visit.
The new PP "protocol" seems to be to do the counseling session on the first phone call. This includes the abortion sell. At the end of that phone call the abortion is scheduled for the first visit. No pregnancy test. No ultrasound viewing of their baby. No viewing of fetal models. No reflection period. We suspect these conversations include subtle pressure about how if they "wait too long" they will no longer be eligible for a chemical abortion, which is "more natural", "more like a miscarriage".
Probably most of these abortions are now chemical. The 2006 annual report noted that 33% of their abortions were now chemical. The new report (2007) made no mention of the new figure.
We don't know if the women are pressured to take the first abortion pill at the clinic to avoid the "risk" of the women changing their mind if they take it home to take. But we do know that many women don't return for the followup visit.
This would perfectly explain the new numbers.
Interestingly, the annual report is long on whining and complaining about government cutbacks and forced employee layoffs. But there is no attempt to explain any of these astonishing trends in their abortion rate, or how they managed to keep their program revenue almost flat despite the loss of non-abortion clients.
And there was absolutely no attempt to explain why their abortion business keeps growing faster than the federal debt despite all their supposed efforts to proliferate contraception, emergency or otherwise.
I would like to ask those pro-borts when exactly in a pregnancy is their defining line that it becomes immoral to execute a child in the womb.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on November 25, 2008 03:39 PMBALTIMORE, November 24, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Though she had practiced the procedure as a student at the University of Maryland School of Medicine by scraping out a piece of fruit with razor-sharp abortion instruments, Lesley Wojcik learned that her training could never have prepared her for a real abortion.What caught her off-guard, says the second-year med student, was the brutality of a procedure that subjects women to extreme pain.
In a Washington Post article detailing her journey to become an abortionist, Wojcik describes how during her first witnessed abortion, she recoiled in horror as the mother began letting out blood-curdling screams. The woman, who was "in obvious pain," had been only partially sedated, and the ordeal was so disturbing that Wojcik says she nearly vomited.
She later discussed with her mother how the brutality of the abortion procedure affected her, noting particularly the stretching of the vagina.
"It's a lot more invasive than I thought," she said, recalling her earlier abortion "practice" involving the removal of the insides of a papaya. "A papaya doesn't bleed and scream."
Wojcik's advocacy of the "right" to abortion was what had driven her to attempt specializing in the procedure, as she was concerned about a growing shortage of abortionists. At first, she had been confident she would have no trouble carrying out the procedures. "It's walk the walk, instead of talk the talk. I want my actions to be consistent with my words," she had said.
After witnessing abortions herself, however, Lesley concluded that it would take a "unique" person to commit abortions on a daily basis. Despite turning down the abortion trade, Wojcik remains an abortion advocate.
Georgette Forney of Silent No More, a campaign dedicated to revealing the sufferings of post-abortive women, said that Wojcik described the reality usually silenced by the media.
"We can't talk about the gruesome procedure, but we can talk about how she has a right to that gruesome procedure," she said.
Forney, who herself had an abortion at 16, said that abortion is usually very painful, and women are often not sedated. In either case, she noted, "it's a traumatic thing to have your legs up in stirrups and have basically a vacuum cleaner inserted between your legs. There's no preparation for it, and it feels like you've been violated internally, like someone has vacuumed out your soul."
The Post article also chronicles Wojcik's encounter with another abortion, where she watched the abortionist count the dismembered parts of an aborted fetus to ensure complete removal. She said that part didn't faze her, as to her the limbs appeared "doll-like."
"It was definitely gruesome," she said. "You could make out what a fetus could look like, tiny feet, lungs, but it didn't look like a person."
Wojcik also described the "surreal" realization that she had fought to save premature babies who were just as mature as one nearly aborted.
Forney described Wojcik's reaction as that of someone forced to "to go into her own form of logic."
"Everybody likes to talk theory, everybody likes to talk politics and politicians, but abortion doesn't happen to the politician, it doesn't happen in the Supreme Court - it happens in a clinic to a woman, and that woman's voice is the one we need to hear from," Forney said.
I made that appointment knowing exactly what I was getting into with a loving boyfriend who held my hand each step of the way. Planned Parenthood gave me nothing but the best of medical care.
You know, it's funny, because normally, I would argue for evolution and say humans and animal are related. But you're right, there are ways in which humans are beautifully unique from everything else on this earth of ours, and one of them is rights to my body and what I do with it. You can't take that away from me or any another person.
Pray with your feet. Stop judging and start helping. This world needs work, and it doesn't have room for unwanted babies and antiquated body laws.
Posted by: Glasses on November 28, 2008 01:21 AMThe world doesn't have room for unwanted former slaves. I have the right to my property and what I do with it. You can't take that away from me or any other person. Keep the government off my plantation! Stop judging slaveowners!
If you cannot recognize that we oppose abortion because we believe it is the destruction of a living human being, and that we are therefore logically and morally obligated to try to end the practice, then you are blind, intentionally or otherwise.
You're probably offended at the comparison to slavery. But we could no more give up the fight for what you naively call "antiquated body laws" than you or I could allow "antiquated slavery laws" to persist. Indeed, abortion is WORSE than slavery: slavery takes away the right to liberty of the slave, for the right to property of the slaveowner; abortion, however, takes away the right to LIFE of the child, for the right of liberty of the mother.
In the hierarchy of rights, life is greater than liberty is greater than property. This is something we recognized in the 1860s, and it's something we recognize today.
Try to learn to understand the people you disagree with. I am not saying you should agree with us, but you clearly don't even UNDERSTAND us -- because if you did, you wouldn't make arguments irrelevant to us -- and that's sad for you.
I find it interesting that she wrote "A loving boyfriend" and not "MY loving boyfriend." The inference either being A) that she's obviously not with the guy she apparently cared enough about to be sleeping with anymore; or B) she has multiple boyfriends. Any surprise that someone of this... type... would be seeking abortions?
and one of them is rights to my body and what I do with it.
It's not just YOUR body, lady.
This world needs work, and it doesn't have room for unwanted babies
It doesn't have room for the elderly either. Can we please kill them too? How about the retarded? How many other drains on society can we start executing for the greater good?
And how many people do we have to kill to preserve our "right to choose?"
Also: What caught her off-guard, says the second-year med student, was the brutality of a procedure that subjects women to extreme pain.
Good.
Posted by: AT on November 29, 2008 11:46 AM