Former Planned Parenthood clinic director Abby Johnson says she has proof that a Texas Planned Parenthood clinic had abortion quotas — target numbers of abortions it needed to perform in order to meet its budget.
Johnson, who left the Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan, Texas in 2010, released a budget statement for the 2010 fiscal year she said shows that the clinic was expected to perform at least 1,135 abortions that year.
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Johnson’s group, And Then There Were None, whose stated goal is “to provide financial, emotional, spiritual and legal support to anyone wishing to leave the abortion industry,” released a photograph a few weeks ago of a Colorado clinic receiving an award for having performed more abortions in the first half of the 2013 fiscal year than they had in the second half of the 2012 fiscal year. (RELATED: Had A Lot Of Abortions? Planned Parenthood Is Handing Out Awards)
Planned Parenthood responded very directly that “First, and plainly, Planned Parenthood does not have ‘quotas’ for any of our services,” but that they do “aim to expand access to all of our services … and yes, we absolutely do celebrate our progress in ensuring that more people have access to the full range of reproductive health care, including abortion.” (RELATED: Planned Parenthood Schools Underage Girls In Violent Sex)
That’s why Johnson decided to release the budget statement, she said, which shows that her clinic needed to make at least $313.29 per abortion performed. The Bryan clinic, which closed in the summer of 2013, performed both medical and surgical abortions up to 14 weeks. Johnson said that this budget, “specifically for the abortion part of our facility,” sought to double the number of abortions performed in the previous fiscal year.
Johnson said that staff “generally look at the previous year’s performance and demographic information” to determine the quota. Planned Parenthood did not respond to requests for comment.
In Planned Parenthood’s 2012-2013 annual report, it boasts as having prevented 515,000 unintended pregnancies, a number it got from the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute. According to their 2013 report, over half the pregnancies in the United States are unintended, which it defines as either “unwanted” or “mistimed” — a pregnancy at the beginning of which the woman did not want, but did at some point in the future. (RELATED: Ice Cream Parlor Introduces New Planned Parenthood Flavor)
Twenty-five percent of Planned Parenthood’s revenue comes from “non-government health services.” Johnson’s clinic needed to make $355,581 specifically from performing abortions in order to meet its budget. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 73,200 abortions were performed in Texas in 2011.
Since Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a law banning abortions after 20 weeks and tightening restrictions on abortion clinics last summer, over 20 have closed. Many of the closings, however, are tied to budget cuts and transfer of funds from Planned Parenthood to public hospitals. (RELATED: Pro-Life Report Says Planned Parenthood Enabling Child Abuse)
Between the 2013 law and the tightening budget, Planned Parenthood is up in arms about Texas, and is currently on track to spend $3 million to support Democrats in the 2014 election. That far outpaces spending from pro-life groups — Texas’s two largest combined have spent only $450,000 so far. They’re also spending $5 million on a new abortion clinic in San Antonio that meets the strict standards of the new law. (RELATED: Abortion Activists Say Abortion Shouldn’t Be Rare)
Johnson says that when she voiced concerns to her supervisor about being expected to double the number of abortions performed, her supervisor laughed and said, “But Abby, abortion is how we make our money.”