Why is the government giving Planned Parenthood hundreds of millions of dollars?

                          6/10/14

The Decline of Planned Parenthood
by Rod Thomson

As the nation's abortion rate drops, its largest purveyor increasingly finds itself in the center of allegations of fraud and abuse.

     Planned Parenthood is under siege over shoddy, fraudulent and dangerous practices at centers bearing its logo across the country.

     Over the past few years, about a dozen former employees at Planned Parenthood facilities from coast to coast have blown the whistle on the atrocities taking place within their own walls.  That has put the group on the defense in federal and state courtrooms as well as the court of public opinion.  The result is that Planned Parenthood now is paying millions of dollars in legal settlements over serial abuses ranging from billing fraud to unsanitary operating conditions - even a botched abortion that was allegedly performed on a Colorado woman who was trying to leave after deciding to keep her baby.

     Those are dire events for the most recognizable purveyor of abortion in the country.  Planned Parenthood has $1.3 billion in net assets, a huge chunk of its money comes from the taxpayers - $540.6 million in FY 2012-13.  It's the very mainstream of abortion.

     This pattern has accelerated the closing of many Planned Parenthood facilities, which have been falling in disuse.  In response, Planned Parenthood decided last year to mandate that every one of its 820 remaining centers nationwide perform abortions.

     "The tide is turning," says Marilyn Musgrave, vice president for governmental affairs at the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List in Washington, D.C.  "People are seeing what Planned Parenthood is all about."

Fraud and Abuse

     Of the many undercover reports on Planned Parenthood conducted by pro-life organizations and alternative media outlets to date, the most successful have been done by Live Action, a five-year-old advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.  Lila Rose and her team have videotaped evidence of Planned Parenthood employees using coercive and manipulative techniques to convince women to abort, facilitating sex - and race - selective abortions and discussing their willingness to cover up the sexual exploitation of minors.  They've also caught Planned Parenthood workers misleading pregnant women about what will happen to their babies during the procedure.

     The group's investigations so far have resulted in about a dozen investigations and changes in state and federal laws.  An undercover video of a New Jersey Planned Parenthood facility resulted in Illinois passing a bill expanding protections for underage girls in 2011.  And lsay year, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., showed his collegues one of Live Action's videos, which helped a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks pass the chamber 228-196 in June.

     "Planned Parenthood's best strategy is to deceive people about the realitiy of their day-to-day activities," Rose says.  "Part of our role is to reveal that reality."

     Some of the most powerful revelations so far have come from those who worked inside the clinics - some of whom have gone not to the media, but to the authorities.

White-Collar Crime

     In Texas, staff members at two Planned Parenthood facilities resigned in 2009, then blew the whistle on fraudulent billings to the state and the federal government.  In one case, Karen Reynolds, who had worked for Planned Parenthood for 10 years, gave testimony that resulted in the abortion seller paying a $4.3 million settlement to the government in July 2013.  Her lawsuit alleged that Medicaid was billed for services and products that were unnecessary, not covered by Medicaid or never provided at all.

     She claimed her bosses at Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, which operates seven facilities in the Houston area and two in Louisiana, were under financial duress and told staffers to turn every visitor into a "revenue-generating client"; meanwhile, several facilities in the organization falsified medical records for years to obtain the claims.

     Reynolds' case is settled.  But Abby Johnson, who worked her way up to the position of manager at Planned Parenthood's Bryan, Texas, facility over eight years of employment, resigned after seeing an ultrasound of a 13-week-old baby fighting against a suction machine in  her mother's womb.

     Johnson, who had two abortions herself before giving birth to a daughter, then became a pro-life advocate.  In 2009, she filed a lawsuit with documents purporting to show more than 87,000 instances of fraud at Planned Parenthood facilities across Texas during her eight-year tenure there.  The Bryan facility closed its doors for good in September 2013.

     Victor Gonzales, former vice president of finance and administration for Planned Parenthood of Los Angeles, filed a lawsuit in 2008 alleging  the clinic overbilled federal and state governments by $180 million from the late 1990s until at least 2008.  The case was dismissed in 2009 but in 2010 was reinstated by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where it was still pending at press time.

     In Iowa, Sue Thayer, who managed Planned Parenthood's Storm Lake facility for 17 years, filed a lawsuit in 2012 claiming the group submitted false, fraudulent and ineligible claims for Medicaid reimbursments.  The case is currently pending in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

     These and other fraud allegations prompted the non-partisan federal Government Accountability Office last August to launch an investigation into how Planned Parenthood is spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars.  That investigation is ongoing.

     "Throughout the country there are fraud schemes we see that appear to be nationally directed," says Michael Norton, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious-liberties law firm based in Arizona that represents Johnson and Reynolds.

     But fraud isn't the only issue causing employees concerns.  They're talking about patient safety as well.

'Unsafe' 

     Last July, two nurses at a Delaware Planned Parenthood facility resigned, saying they feared they would lose their licenses if the unsafe, unsanitary conditions prevalent there were allowed to continue.

     One of the nurses, Jane Mitchell-Werbrich, told the local ABC affilate in Wilmington, "It was just unsafe.  I couldn't tell you how ridiculously unsafe it was.  (The abortionist) didn't even wear gloves."  The operating table was "not washed down, it's not even cleaned off," she added.  "It has bloody drainage on it."

     The other nurse, Joyce Vasikonis, told ABC, "They were using instruments on patients that were not sterile."  Both nurses remain pro-abortion but now say they believe all Planned Parenthood facilities should be shut down for mistreating women.

     Melony Meanor, a former manager at the same Delaware clinic, testified in front of a state legislative committee in July that Planned Parenthood's negligence went beyond abortion: Workers failed failed to report approximately 200 positive test resuls for chlamydia and gonorrhea to patients over a six-month period between 2011 and 2012.  She urged women to get their medical care elsewhere.