By Will Hall, Message Executive Editor
WASHINGTON – Planned Parenthood announced it would forego as much as $60 million by not participating in the Title X program, which provides funding for such things as cancer screenings, because of a Trump adminstration rule that the grants cannot be used by a clinic that offers abortions or makes referrals for abortions even if it provides other women’s health care services.
In essence, Planned Parenthood had to choose between the $60 million in federal grants for women’s healthcare or the more lucrative abortion business it conducts. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parent hood’s research arm, reported that an abortion, whether surgical or chemical, cost about $500 last year in Planned Parenthood clinics across the United States. That means Planned Parenthood, which performed nearly 333,000 abortions last year, made in the neighborhood of $166 million from abortions, or $106 million more than it would receive this year in women’s healthcare funding under the federal government’s Title X program.
Planned Parenthood also receives Medicaid funds, which last year totaled an estimated $500 million for the group. In total, the nation’s largest abortion provider had revenues from all sources of $1.5 billion.
