Charity, Business, or Racket?

Keith Riler, a corporate financial analyst by training and occasional writer for the American Thinker , offers an analysis of Planned Parenthood’s business model in this month’s Faith magazine. It’s a wide-ranging survey, although much of the data is drawn from primary sources. In his piece Riler demolishes the notion that Planned Parenthood isn’t in the abortion business, and shows the duplicitousness of some commonly-repeated defenses of the organization:

o Planned Parenthood claims that abortion “constitutes 3%” of the company’s services. While technically true, an unorthodox calculation underlies that statistic. Planned Parenthood’s 3% calculation equally weights all products and services; for example, the calculation counts a condom, a pregnancy test and a $468 abortion the same. This is misleading and, as in any financial exercise, the correct assessment is a dollar-weighted one.

o At an average of $468 a head, Planned Parenthood collected $155 million in abortion revenues in 2009, or 38.4% of its health centre income.

o In the face of nationally falling abortions, down to 92% in 2009 versus 2000 levels, Planned Parenthood succeeded in growing its abortions by 68%.

o Planned Parenthood’s 2009-2010 Annual Report describes 329,445 abortions as compared to 841 adoption referrals. (!)

o Planned Parenthood’s average customer repeated business four times in 2010. That customer bought contraception, disease testing, pregnancy tests and abortions. Four times a year is a repeat rate more characteristic of a high-end retail business than an annual well-woman exam.

While some of the report’s assertions seem more debatable than others, that last tidbit about repeat customers is particularly worth noting because it  gets to Riler’s most important point: namely, that Planned Parenthood is a corporation, and one with a highly-refined business model at that. Though the organization likes to portray itself as the last refuge of single mothers and enlightener of the naive, it could not exist without a large amount of cynical acumen. Far from being a neutral observer or a Good Samaritan bystander, it has growth goals, well-tested methods, and a target audience.

Perhaps, though, a corporate analogy is overly generous, for it says nothing about the morality of the firm’s goals. To that end, near the conclusion of the article, Riler makes a more accurate, unsettling analogy: “Planned Parenthood’s effective business model was pioneered by drug pushers—give away freebies in anticipation of bigger-ticket sales when the customer is desperate.”