Planned Parenthood mandates abortions

A third affiliate of the nation's leading abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, is leaving the organization because of a demand that all local groups provide abortions starting no later than 2013.

"Planned Parenthood of South Central New York is the latest affiliate to become independent because it won't comply with the rule," Marjorie Dannenfesler, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement today.

She cited an announcement from the affiliate itself.

"This mandate will no doubt result in an increase in revenue for Planned Parenthood as well as an increase in the more than 329,000 lives the abortion chain ends in one year. Does that sound like women's health?"

Earlier, several affiliates of Planned Parenthood in Texas abandoned the national abortion leader.

The mandate was revealed in a series of reports, including one in The Daily Caller about two years ago.

The report said Planned Parenthood was standardizing all of its agencies, and that would include a requirement that every operation offer abortion services.

In fact, Lisa David, a senior vice president of health services support for Planned Parenthood, said then a new initiative would standardize services.

"From well-woman exams to lifesaving breast and cervical cancer screenings, more patients will now have access to the full range of Planned Parenthood services. To meet the needs of our patients, Planned Parenthood affiliates will now offer a unified set of core preventive services," she said.

That was when officials with the Planned Parenthood in South Texas said they were dropping out to become independent. CEO Amanda Stukenberg of the Coastal Bend office said: "Our position is that if that is a need in your community, fine. There are far greater needs in our area than abortion. We feel that women here have options. We don't need to duplicate services."

Dannenfelser said Planned Parenthood's mandate requiring that all affiliates provide abortions beginning in 2013 "is the ultimate evidence that Planned Parenthood's chief concern is making money of abortion – not the health of vulnerable women and girls."

The Houston Chronicle later reported that Claudia Stravato, who ran a Planned Parenthood business in Amarillo, also left the federation.

Stravato, an avid abortion supporter, told the newspaper her facility "would be bombed" if it provided abortions.

"We're in a part of the state that would never allow one to be built, let alone perform abortions," she said at the time.

The SBA List said one former Planned Parenthood worker reported, "In state after state, you've seen that brand of Planned Parenthood used as synonymous with abortion services. And that's the great sadness in all of this."

Planned Parenthood reported 329,445 abortions in 2010, and abortions made up 91 percent of the "pregnancy services" the company offers.

For every adoption referral, Planned Parenthood performed 392 abortions, SBA List reported.

Another crack in Planned Parenthood's foundation also was revealed recently when a manager of an operation in Storm Lake, Iowa, was fired for questioning her affiliate bosses about the mandate to provide "webcam abortions."

She later launched a lawsuit against the company for potential Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse.

The claim by Sue Thayer alleges the abortion provider's Heartland branch has scammed American taxpayers by filing nearly 500,000 fraudulent Medicaid claims over 10 years, netting the organization an illicit $28 million.

Thayer, former manager of Iowa's Storm Lake and LeMars Planned Parenthood clinics, has sued the organization under both federal and Iowa False Claims Acts, alleging Planned Parenthood knowingly committed Medicaid fraud from 2002 to 2009 by seeking improper and even illegal reimbursements from Iowa Medicaid Enterprise and the Iowa Family Planning Network.

According to the lawsuit, originally filed in March of last year but made public just recently, Planned Parenthood submitted "repeated false, fraudulent, and/or ineligible claims for reimbursements" to Medicaid.

Thayer's attorneys claim that if she prevails in the lawsuit, Planned Parenthood could be ordered to pay the federal government and Iowa as much as $5.5 billion in False Claims Act damages and penalties.

"Americans really deserve to know if their hard-earned tax dollars are being funneled to groups that are misusing [them]," said Senior Counsel Michael J. Norton, a former United States attorney working with Alliance Defending Freedom to represent Thayer. "People may disagree on their views about abortion, but everyone can agree that Planned Parenthood must play by the same rules as everyone else. It is not entitled to any public funds, especially if it is defrauding Medicaid and the American taxpayer."

The lawsuit claims that Planned Parenthood's "C-Mail" scam began by automatically sending a year's supply of birth control pills to women who came into one of the organization's clinics. The pills were usually sent without a physician's order, often dispensed to women "at levels not medically reasonable or necessary … constituting 'abuse or overuse'" and were even shipped without the patient's consent or foreknowledge.

Planned Parenthood then billed Medicaid $26.32 for each month's worth of pills, the lawsuit claims, even though the cost to the clinics was only $2.98.

Thayer claims the scam proved to be so profitable Planned Parenthood even held competitions among its clinics to see which of them could enroll the most women in the "C-Mail" program.