The U.S. has seen an unprecedented wave of anti-abortion legislation this year, but Planned Parenthood continues to shift its focus away from women’s reproductive health issues. 

On Wednesday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a heartbeat bill into law, effectively banning most abortions in the state. This bill has been reported on as one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country, as it does not allow for exceptions in cases of rape or incest. The bill also differs from other anti-abortion legislation in that, rather than having public officials enforce the law, it allows any private citizen to sue violators of the law. The law is slated to go into effect September 1st, but many legal experts say that the law is unconstitutional and won’t survive a court challenge. 

However, ealier this week it was also announced that the Supreme Court granted Missisissippi’s request to review a challenge to its law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. This not only puts Mississippi women at risk, but threatens access to abortion for women across the country. If the Court weakens or overturns Roe v. Wade, 11 states with trigger bans would instantaneously ban abortion, and other states would likely follow close behind. 

And these are just the latest developments in a truly devastating year for women’s reproductive rights. Just three weeks ago, WoLF reported on four states that had passed anti-abortion restrictions within days of each other. Dozens of restrictions have been passed across the country since the beginning of the year. 

And yet, Planned Parenthood, the largest single provider of abortions in the U.S., is only sliding further and further into gender ideology, which insists that pregnancy is no longer a health condition exclusive to women.

WoLF supporter Boudicca Grant writes about this betrayal of women below:

Planned PARENTHOOD: An Oxymoron

by Boudicca Grant

In my recent reading online, I discovered that Planned PARENTHOOD is now kowtowing to the transgender lobby and offers gender services. As a former RN/BSN who worked for Planned PARENTHOOD, I was aghast. I could not fathom why in the world Planned PARENTHOOD would be offering these services.

As implied in their name, Planned PARENTHOOD was all about contraception and family planning when I worked for them. To think that women now must get in line behind transgender clients, stalling their wait (which was long enough already) for critical birth control and abortion services. The resources of organizations like Planned PARENTHOOD are already stretched paper thin. To add services to treat gender dysphoria to their plate seems incredible to me.

I worked many hours for little pay as a nurse in those clinics. But I always had the satisfaction at the end of the day of knowing that I had helped some woman to avoid the horrors described by Margaret Sanger, birth control pioneer. I watched my own mother have baby after baby, particularly so in the fifties and sixties when bottle feeding disrupted the natural spacing often afforded by breastfeeding. Brother one, two, three and four all came within a five-year period. I watched as her body withered from the demands of pregnancy and childbirth.

In the early seventies, an unwanted pregnancy sent me flying cross country to one of the two states offering legal abortion services at that time. Women with fewer resources were caravanned in carload after carload to Mexico across the southern border of the United States to obtain abortion services without fear of legal ramifications. My own grandmother had to obtain a back-alley procedure during the Great Depression due to lack of income to support more than the three existing family members. She was greatly changed by that experience and refused to ever have a sexual relationship with my grandfather again. They were only in their thirties. They lived together until he died in his early eighties.

With this background you can see why I was appalled to find that the services so desperately needed by women were, in fact, being diluted by the needs of a population that would be best served by other health care providers. At present, there are more than 500 gender clinics in the United States, and while their numbers grow almost daily, the number of abortion providers has been reduced dramatically.

While the right wing has done an effective job of abortion shaming an entire generation, the abortion pill has also had an impact on the drastic reduction in the number of surgical abortion services performed since the eighties. I maintain that lack of available provider services and inadequate income have also added to that decline. So, learning that our young women have to get in line behind clients that belong in a gender clinic appalls me. No woman should have to stand in line behind or wait in a small, cramped room for abortion services with a man in a dress. No woman. Ever.

According to the Guttmacher.org website:

• In 2017, an estimated 862,320 abortions were provided in clinical settings in the United States, representing a 7% decline since 2014 and the continuation of a long-term trend.

• The U.S. abortion rate dropped to 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 in 2017, the lowest rate recorded since abortion was legalized in 1973. Abortion rates fell in most states and in all four regions of the country.

•  A total of 339,640 medication abortions occurred in 2017—about 39% of all abortions.

• As in previous years, clinics provided the overwhelming majority of U.S. abortions (95%), while private physicians’ offices and hospitals accounted for 5%.

• In 2017, 808 clinic facilities provided abortions, a 2% increase from 2014. However, regional and state disparities in clinic availability grew more pronounced; the number of clinics increased in the Northeast and the West, by 16% and 4% respectively, and decreased in the Midwest and the South, by 6% and 9%, respectively.

• Although the number of state abortion restrictions continued to increase in the Midwest and South between 2014 and 2017, these restrictive policies do not appear to have been the primary driver of declining abortion rates. There was also no consistent relationship between increases or decreases in clinic numbers and changes in state abortion rates. 

• Fertility rates declined in almost all states between 2014 and 2017, and it is unlikely that the decline in abortion was due to an increase in unintended births.

• Factors that may have contributed to the decline in abortion were improvements in contraceptive use and increases in the number of individuals relying on self-managed abortions outside of a clinical setting.

According to the CDC 2020 data:

In 2018, approximately three fourths (77.7%) of abortions were performed at ≤9 weeks’ gestation, and nearly all (92.2%) were performed at ≤13 weeks’ gestation. In 2018, and during 2009–2018, the percentage of abortions performed at >13 weeks’ gestation remained consistently low (≤9.0%). In 2018, the highest proportion of abortions were performed by surgical abortion at ≤13 weeks’ gestation (52.1%), followed by early medical abortion at ≤9 weeks’ gestation (38.6%), surgical abortion at >13 weeks’ gestation (7.8%), and medical abortion at >9 weeks’ gestation (1.4%); all other methods were uncommon (<0.1%). Among those that were eligible (≤9 weeks’ gestation), 50.0% of abortions were early medical abortions. In 2017, the most recent year for which PMSS data were reviewed for pregnancy-related deaths, two women were identified to have died as a result of complications from legal induced abortion.

This data clearly indicates that medically managed abortion services are needed by American women. No amount of birth control will ever replace the need for safe, legal medical and surgical abortion services.

While decline in fertility rates, improved contraceptive use and self-managed abortions may have contributed to the decline, the Midwest and South have seen a drastic reduction in the availability of abortion clinic services. With only 5% of abortions provided by private providers, poor women in the Midwest and South have been the biggest losers. Who knows how many unwanted births have occurred because the waiting rooms of Planned PARENTHOOD had no room for low-income women needing birth control or abortion services? No one. It is socially unacceptable in today’s political climate to admit that a pregnancy is unwanted. Unplanned? Perhaps. Unwanted? Almost never.

Following the removal of Dr. Leana Wen as head of Planned Parenthood Federation of America due to her commitment to women and providing women’s health services, the Federation affirmed their staunch dedication to providing so-called LGBT services. I am a lesbian. I would daresay that it was not LGBT services that PPFA desired to deliver, but transgender services enabling gender reassignment. What does that have to do with PARENTHOOD? Absolutely nothing. While Dr. Wen denies any aversion to rendering trans-inclusive health care, she should have been applauded, not removed. She remained dedicated to the goals Margaret Sanger envisioned in the days when she saw so many women die in needless childbirths. Dr. Wen appeared to be a champion for women. 

In losing Title X funding under the Trump administration, the services offered by Planned PARENTHOOD have been put at risk. No reasonable feminist wants that to happen, only that Planned PARENTHOOD return to its original purpose of providing family planning and gynecological services for women. Providing services such as gender reassignment and treatment for erectile dysfunction for men is outside the scope of their legitimate purpose.

Today’s Planned Parenthood comes nowhere near meeting the original goals of providing family planning to enrich the lives of women and children.

WoLF would like to thank Boudicca for her insightful and timely contribution towards true reproductive autonomy for women and girls—If you are interested in contributing written analysis or an op-ed, please complete our Volunteer Interest Survey or submit an anonymous story to our Letters From the Front to amplify your voice and end the self-censor. 

WoLF’s mission is to abolish regressive gender roles and the epidemic of male violence using legal arguments, policy advocacy, and public education—Please consider supporting our charitable mission here. Thank you in advance for your generosity!