Critique: Should Planned Parenthood Close?

After reading my classmate’s blog post on Texas Government News regarding Planned Parenthood, I was very intrigued by the facts that were shared.  I had not heard about the Government Accountability Office’s investigation into Planned Parenthood’s financial records or the $4.3 million lawsuit that a Texas Planned Parenthood affiliate paid to settle a fraudulent Medicaid billing claim out of court.

After doing some research of my own, I agree with the author that both financial concerns appear to be a clear blemish on the record of Planned Parenthood.  In addition, after looking into the statistic that claims the organization performed 333,964 abortions last year, I agree it does seem like a substantial amount of abortions performed. However, with the current state of the economy people are turning to Planned Parenthood as an affordable resource for abortions.  The rate of 1 abortion every 94 seconds includes all the clinics across the U.S. and thus should be examined from a broader perspective than just Texas.  Actually the author’s claim about Texas not having the capacity to perform abortions at this rate is the exact reason why Planned Parenthood was fighting the recent abortion bill that was passed in Texas.  By closing abortion clinics, women will have less access to affordable family planning and health services.

Ultimately, I believe we need to examine Planned Parenthood from a broader perspective.  It does appear to have some financial concerns, and similar to the Medicaid expansion program, the program is not perfect. However, it is important to understand the valuable services Planned Parenthood provides including: helping prevent unintended pregnancies, administering cancer screenings, administering STD tests and treatments, providing educational programs for youths and adults, and performing abortions.  While many people commonly associate Planned Parenthood with primarily abortions, the statistics show that only 3% of their services are related to abortions.  Their main focus is on prevention of unintended pregnancies with nearly 71% of their clients receiving pregnancy prevention services. Therefore, I believe that rather than saying Planned Parenthood should close based on two financial incidents and one debatable abortion fact, the author should take a more logical approach to examining the program. I will acknowledge that the program has some faults, but the services they provide benefit the health and well-being of millions of Americans and far outweigh the minor problems that draw the media’s attention.  

Overall, I felt that the author presented quality information and choose an interesting topic that was very informative to me as a reader. However, I did have a few minor criticisms. As previously mentioned, I believe that their analysis may have focused too much on the financial records of Planned Parenthood and abortions.  While these are relevant issues, I believe that next time the author should analyze the full spectrum issues before deciding that a government funded program should close their doors. Finally, while I enjoyed the opinionated blog post, I would avoid the overuse of exclamation points in the future unless they are really relevant to provide emphasis.