Promoting itself as source of chemicals for making kids transgender
By WND News Services September 17, 2022
(Image courtesy Pexels)
By Mark Hemingway
Real Clear Wire
Since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June, Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson has tried to present new state laws restricting abortion as an opportunity for the nation’s largest abortion provider. “Now that we are in a world where we are no longer defending Roe,” she told Time magazine, “we have actually an opportunity to reimagine and reconstruct something better.”
The sense that Planned Parenthood’s fortunes are on the upswing is palpable, given the liberal backlash against the Roe ruling – among women especially – blowback evident in recent off-year voting and opinion polling. OpenSecrets says the organization reported a 4,000% increase in donations just after the decision, and half of the donations were from new donors. It is planning on spending $50 million on elections this fall, an unprecedented amount for a midterm cycle.
But close observers of the abortion debate say there’s limited potential for the organization to embrace a broader role – for example, in dispensing abortion drugs over providing surgical abortions. Its shift in that direction had been under way long before the Supreme Court ruling, but it faces competitive challenges, since abortion drugs are widely available over the Internet, and new risks, since the drugs more easily evade regulatory scrutiny.
Another controversial growth option in Planned Parenthood’s future is far afield from pregnancy: distributing hormones used by children and others to change their gender. CEO Johnson has said that providing “gender-affirming care” is one of the services that “is going to become even more important.” But that option carries big risks, complications, and uncertainties too.
Can Planned Parenthood evolve? For years, despite evidence to the contrary, it has emphasized its versatility, casting its operations as “community health clinics” that provide a variety of essential health care services, especially contraception and testing for sexually transmitted infections. In 2011, Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s president at the time, suggested in a television interview that the organization provided mammograms, a point soon repeated by President Obama and others. In 2015, a Washington Post “fact checker” concluded, “The myth that Planned Parenthood actually offers mammogram X-rays to patients has been long debunked, and needs to stop being repeated.”
An oft-cited talking point from Planned Parenthood’s own fact sheet was that “3% of all Planned Parenthood health services are abortion services.” In this accounting, the cost of services wasn’t taken into account – prescribing oral contraceptives at a cost $20 and a second-trimester abortion that costs in excess of $2,000 are both counted as services Planned Parenthood provides, but they are obviously not comparable in terms of the organization’s income or incentives. Again, a Washington Post fact-checker declared the 3% figure “misleading,” dinged the organization for its lack of transparency about abortion services, and gave Planned Parenthood “three Pinocchios” for the claim.
So there’s little doubt that abortion is Planned Parenthood’s main business. Over the last three decades, its position as America’s leading abortion provider increased markedly, according to James Studnicki, a former professor of public health at the University of North Carolina and Johns Hopkins who is now vice president and director of data analytics for the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute. Between 1995 and 2014, abortions dropped 50% at non-Planned Parenthood abortion providers, “but Planned Parenthood abortions were up 142%,” says Studnicki, summarizing the results of a peer-reviewed paper he published in 2018.
By 2019, Planned Parenthood was responsible for about 40% of all abortions in the U.S., compared to 10% of abortions in 1995, Studnicki said. In recent years, the total number of abortions in America has has been increasing, reversing a long trend of historical decline. There were 930,160 abortions in 2020, the Guttmacher Institute reports, an 8% increase from 862,320 abortions in 2017.
Nevertheless, Planned Parenthood’s reach was diminishing even before the Supreme Court decision, as several states passed laws restricting abortion access – restrictions the group now thinks it can capitalize upon. Tessa Longbons, a senior research associate at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, said that between June of 2021 and June of 2022, Planned Parenthood closed or merged 25 centers out of approximately 600 facilities the organization runs around the country. Danika Severino Wynn, vice president for abortion access at Planned Parenthood, told The New York Times that more closures are possible in response to the court’s June decision: “Affiliates in these states that are extremely hostile to abortion access are being forced to make the difficult decision whether or not to suspend providing abortion services following the court’s decision, due to their state’s legal landscape.”
Planned Parenthood did not respond to RealClearInvestigations’ request for comment, nor did the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research group historically affiliated with Planned Parenthood.
Regardless of whether Planned Parenthood closes additional clinics or pursues other sources of revenue, its core mission of providing abortions appears unlikely to change – although its proportions of chemical and surgical abortions likely will.
Nationwide, chemical abortions made up over half of all abortions as of 2020. A number of individual Planned Parenthood affiliates have reported that more than 60% of the abortions they are doing are chemical abortions as opposed to surgical abortions.
Chemical abortions typically involve a combination of two drugs – mifepristone (aka RU-486), which kills the fetus; and misoprostol, which causes the uterus to shrink, expelling the detached embryo through the vagina.
Because women can order these drugs online and self-administer them, it is not clear how Planned Parenthood will be able to dominate the market as it does with surgical abortions, which require doctors and expensive facilities. There are also unresolved legal questions, especially if some states outlaw the sale of these drugs, and liability questions regarding negative outcomes.
Currently, abortion drugs are approved by the Food and Drug Administration only through the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Though even abortion-rights advocates concede that intense pain and bleeding for two weeks are normal outcomes, advocates are pushing for approval of mifepristone and misoprostol later in pregnancy when the potential for complications increases significantly as the fetus grows larger.
Just how common life-threatening side effects are in chemical abortions is disputed. An oft-cited 2009 study on women in Finland published in Obstetrics & Gynecology found one out of every five given abortion drugs in the first trimester experienced a complication, compared with one out of 20 women who underwent a surgical abortion. The most common adverse event was potentially life-threatening hemorrhaging, which represented 16% of the total complications.
In contrast, the Guttmacher Institute cites a study published in the pro-abortion journal Contraception showing “serious complications requiring hospitalization for infection treatment or [blood] transfusion occur in less than 0.4% of patients under the standard protocol.”
In 2013, a bulletin from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists noted that researchers in North Carolina were unable to find American volunteers for a study on whether the drugs were effective in midterm abortions because of the trauma and risks involved. American women “strongly preferred” surgical abortion under anesthesia.
Abortion researchers have instead resorted to performing drug trials on women in developing countries. In 2017, Gynuity Health Projects, a New York-based group aligned with Planned Parenthood, began trials on second-term pharmaceutical abortions in Burkina Faso, despite concerns – voiced even by the study’s director in the country – that critical health infrastructure was lacking to deal with the known potential life-threatening side-effects of chemical abortions, such as the ability to readily provide blood transfusions in the event of hemorrhaging.
In June, New York magazine published a series of explicitly pro-abortion features on “Life After Roe” with the aim of helping women obtain abortions. One of those features was a first-person account of a drug-induced abortion:
My gynecologist told me to expect a “bad period.” … The actual problem was, as with so many experiences in women’s health care, my doctor didn’t adequately prepare me. She told me I’d have the cramping and bleeding of that “bad period” but didn’t describe the range and type of pain I might experience. Instead of offering sufficient pain medication or techniques to moderate pain, she prescribed six Tylenol with codeine, though she didn’t think I’d “need” them. I did, but who knows if it even helped? My pain came in waves; a grinding in my pelvis, like a mortar and pestle in the range of my pubic bone. (Years later, when I was in labor with my child, I realized I’d already experienced early contractions—during my abortion. Medication abortion can be a sort of in-between of the two experiences, a “bad period” and birth.)
And rather than explaining that I would bleed heavily for days — I spent at least 24 hours in a sort of towel cocoon until I felt as if I could bear to wear anything on my bottom half — she simply said I would “see some clots” but shouldn’t worry unless I soaked through two maxi-pads in an hour for two hours. After it was all over, I bled for two weeks with more mysterious contents in the pads: material that looked like coffee grounds (Google told me they were tiny clots), larger clots, dark blood, pink blood. Blood loss and the hormonal switching made me exhausted, weak, and bloated.
After my termination, physically, I felt off — mentally and emotionally, I felt even worse for being so ill-prepared and uninformed. As my husband put it, “We didn’t even get a f—ing pamphlet.” (I should say, my doctor wasn’t “bad” — and my experience wasn’t atypical.)
Last December, the FDA further loosened the safety regulations around mifepristone by removing the previous FDA requirement that the drug be administered in person by a doctor. Those seeking an abortion can consult with a doctor via telemedicine, receive the pills by mail, and go through the process of inducing an abortion without ever setting foot in a clinic. The FDA’s decision was announced just 15 days after the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson, the case that would go on to overturn Roe v. Wade when the ruling was announced in June.
Pro-abortion rights groups don’t discount the risks of opting for an at-home abortion via telemedicine. A Gynuity “evaluation of a direct to patient telemedicine abortion service in the United States” found 8% of patients in the study given abortion pills via telemedicine ended up going to an ER or urgent care clinic.
Further, whether FDA approval of a drug would pre-empt a state ban remains a controversial legal question. “When [the FDA] approves an abortion drug for safety and efficacy, it’s not talking about safety for the unborn human being obviously,” says Edward Whelan, a senior fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center. “It’s talking about safety for the mother and efficacy in killing the unborn human being. And when a state enacts a law barring that drug, it’s not disagreeing with the FDA judgment on safety and efficacy.”
Abortion drugs could create other forms of legal jeopardy, according to Jonathan Mitchell, the former solicitor general of Texas. “It’s easy to just have a state pass a law that says if you manufacture this drug or distribute it in any way, you’re strictly liable for any personal injuries – not only to the mother, but also to the fetus,” he said. “You’ll be sued for wrongful death, put out of business, and all you need is one state to do this … how many drugs have been taken off the market due to lawsuits over personal injuries that are far less dangerous than this?”
For now, the regulatory uncertainty is causing some Planned Parenthood affiliates to act cautiously about offering chemical abortion for fear of running afoul of state laws. Montana, where chemical abortion is legal, and the four more restrictive states bordering it provide an illustration. Montana has seen an influx of out-of-state women seeking abortions. But Planned Parenthood of Montana, which runs three clinics in the state, has stopped offering abortion pills to anyone who doesn’t live in the state. According to NPR, the president of Planned Parenthood of Montana circulated an internal memo “citing concerns about the potential for civil and criminal action.”
Despite its initial caution, “I think Planned Parenthood will find ways to continue to provide chemical abortions even where they don’t have facilities available,” says Studnicki.
As for “gender affirming care,” its growth has not gone unnoticed by Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood’s annual report for 2018-2019 made no mention of hormone treatments for transgender patients, but its last two annual reports have touted it. According to its most recent annual report, Planned Parenthood has clinics in 33 states and the District of Columbia that provide cross-sex hormones to people who identify as transgender. In 2020, Planned Parenthood’s website claimed, “Nationally, Planned Parenthood is the second largest provider of Gender Affirming Hormone Care,” though that claim has since been scrubbed from its website.
About 1.6 million Americans identify as transgender and that number is growing quickly. A report released ethis year by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, shows that the number of young people identifying as transgender doubled between 2017 and 2020 and now represents between 1.3% and 1.4% of all Americans under the age of 24.
Given the growing market for transgender services, the financial incentives for Planned Parenthood are considerable. Last year, Abigail Shrier, author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” published an interview with a Planned Parenthood employee who supports the organization’s core mission related to abortion, but had serious misgivings about how Planned Parenthood was doling out hormones.
According to the employee, “Trans-identifying kids are cash cows, and they are kept on the hook for the foreseeable future in terms of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, meetings, etc., whereas abortions are (hopefully) a one-and-done situation.”
The cost of prescription hormones alone can vary from around $400 to $1,500 a year, not including the cost of blood tests and other medical services necessary for transgender treatments.
The Planned Parenthood employee further told Shrier that one or two new biologically female teen patients were coming to the clinic she worked at every day. They were sent to a gender counselor at the clinic with “no actual professional credentials or formal training other than being [a male-to-female transgender person].” The gender counselor would send “notes to an actual licensed mental health professional somewhere off-site, and rubber stamp approve the patients to begin their transition. This is basically how they circumvented the requirement to speak to an actual counselor.”
Such apparent vulnerabilities in its operations suggest that Planned Parenthood’s effort to, in Johnson’s words, “reimagine and reconstruct something better” in a post-Roe environment remains unclear.
“If they were a health care provider interested in women’s issues such as prenatal care, if they were interested in essentially providing any other kinds of service, they might find different ways to continue to engage,” says Studnicki. “But my expectation is that over time, Planned Parenthood, at least as a clinic, will disappear in communities where abortion is restricted.”
This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
See the big list of cities and states using tax dollars for abortions
Cash handouts follow Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe
By WND News Services September 25, 2022
(Image courtesy Unsplash)
By Carole Novielli
Live Action News
Multiple cities and states across the country are funding Planned Parenthood — and abortion — by sending hard-earned taxpayer dollars, either directly to an abortion industry recipient or to an abortion funding organization, which in turn, pays for abortions. The move follows a June decision by the United States Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, enabling states to determine if they want to rise up and protect the preborn child, or whether they will allow preborn life to be executed by violent abortion.
TRENDING: Biden’s approval sinks below 40% again!
Since 2000, Planned Parenthood has committed almost 6.4 million abortions and received $9.3 billion from taxpayers.
Albuquerque, New Mexico
In August, the Albuquerque City Council voted to send $250,000 to Planned Parenthood. City Councilors Isaac Benton, Pat Davis, Tammy Fiebelkorn, Trudy Jones, and Klarissa Peña voted for the bill that funded Planned Parenthood. As Live Action News previously reported, Albuquerque’s Department Director of Family and Community Services Carol Pierce claimed the funds would go toward services like wellness visits, breast exams, STD testing, and cancer screenings, despite the fact that those services at Planned Parenthood have been on the decline, while abortion and taxpayer funding is on the rise.
Atlanta, Georgia
In June, the Atlanta City Council approved a resolution stressing that no city funds will be used to investigate abortion, and that police will make investigations of possible illegal abortion their lowest priority. A separate resolution allowed the city of Atlanta to donate $300,000 to pro-abortion organizations, like Access for Reproductive Care Southeast. The Atlanta City Council passed the resolution on the consent agenda unanimously and without any objection. The money will pay for things such as rides to abortion appointments, abortion travel, and accommodations for women seeking abortions, according to news reports.
Austin, Texas
In June, CNN reported, “An amendment in the city’s 2020 budget will set aside $150,000 for ‘logistical and supportive services for abortion access’ such as ‘transportation, child care, case management, and other services as needed,’ the amendment reads. The amendment was added to the budget with only one objector before the council – which includes the mayor as a voting member.” It passed 10-1.
Baltimore City, Maryland
In June, Mayor Brandon M. Scott announced that the “City of Baltimore would provide $300,000 in grants to organizations that offer abortion and family planning services.” Mayor Scott called the move “crucial” describing it as an investment and claiming the city was “morally obligated to make Baltimore a safe haven for care-seekers.”
“Earlier in June, the City Council passed a resolution to designate Baltimore City as an Abortion Rights Protection Jurisdiction and improve abortion care capacity in preparation for an increase in the number of out-of-state patients seeking to terminate a pregnancy,” the release also stated.
Bloomington, Indiana
In August, Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton laid out the 2023 budget, which would include, “up to $2,500 in travel and lodging expenses for employees to travel out of state for an abortion.” The move is in response to Indiana’s state legislature’s enactment of SB1, which prohibits most abortions.
Chicago, Illinois
In August, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who has called the city an abortion oasis, issued a press release vowing $500,000 in taxpayer dollars to be split between the Chicago Abortion Fund and Planned Parenthood of Illinois, paid for by the Chicago Department of Public Health. As Live Action News previously pointed out, Planned Parenthood has a troubling history of injuring women in Chicago.
“The City is committed to supporting access to reproductive healthcare for not only Chicagoans, but also non-Chicago residents seeking safe, legal care from states that have or ultimately will severely restrict or ban abortion. The delegate agencies were selected through a competitive request for proposals process,” the news release stated.
Cleveland, Ohio
In July, Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb announced that he and the city council were working to pass legislation to create a $100,000 “Reproductive Freedom Fund.” The fund would be used to “cover travel, logistics, and lodging expenses for Cleveland residents and City employees seeking a legal abortion in a nearby state.”
Columbus, Ohio
In July, the Columbus City Council allocated over $26,000 to Pro-Choice Ohio, originally founded as a NARAL affiliate, to investigate pregnancy resource centers and determine whether “residents of the City of Columbus have access to medically accurate and legal reproductive health information.” As Live Action News previously documented, the ordinance language claimed that “there is a need for determining if crisis pregnancy centers provide effective, accurate, and comprehensive information and services in their crisis pregnancy centers in Columbus.” The ordinance authorizes the city clerk to “enter into a non-profit service agreement with Pro-Choice Ohio.”
That same month, the Council passed an ordinance that authorizes the director of the Department of Finance and Management to enter into grant agreements of $1 million dollars with Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio and the Ohio Women’s Alliance to ” provide practical support and medically accurate and legal reproductive health information to residents of the City of Columbus.”
They do not define what “medically accurate” means.
While the ordinance supports “access to reproductive healthcare,” it claims it “does not include the use of public funds to subsidize abortion procedures and associated services such as anesthesia, laboratory tests, or hospital services.” It does fund “patient support expenses” which include “information hotlines, peer support, and case management; community education and engagement regarding reproductive health; and operational needs of the grantees stemming from providing such supports to the public.”
A press release from Ohio Women’s Alliance notes that the City “will grant $500,000 to partially fund the Member Assistance Program (MAP) established by Ohio Women’s Alliance (OWA) and Abortion Fund of Ohio (AFO) (formerly Women Have Options) to protect Ohioans’ access to full-range reproductive health care.” According to the Columbus Dispatch, the fund would be paid for through the city’s Reimagining Safety Fund and Citywide Transfer Fund.
Fresno, California
In August, the Fresno City Council voted 5-1 to pass a resolution to serve as a pass-through entity for $9.5 million in state funds designated for local non-profits, including $1 million earmarked for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, KVPR.org claimed. The move was a state budget request secured by Assemblymember Dr. Joaquin Arambula (D–Fresno), according to SJVSun.com
While the ordinance supports “access to reproductive healthcare,” it claims it “does not include the use of public funds to subsidize abortion procedures and associated services such as anesthesia, laboratory tests, or hospital services.” It does fund “patient support expenses” which include “information hotlines, peer support, and case management; community education and engagement regarding reproductive health; and operational needs of the grantees stemming from providing such supports to the public.”
A press release from Ohio Women’s Alliance notes that the City “will grant $500,000 to partially fund the Member Assistance Program (MAP) established by Ohio Women’s Alliance (OWA) and Abortion Fund of Ohio (AFO) (formerly Women Have Options) to protect Ohioans’ access to full-range reproductive health care.” According to the Columbus Dispatch, the fund would be paid for through the city’s Reimagining Safety Fund and Citywide Transfer Fund.
Fresno, California
In August, the Fresno City Council voted 5-1 to pass a resolution to serve as a pass-through entity for $9.5 million in state funds designated for local non-profits, including $1 million earmarked for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, KVPR.org claimed. The move was a state budget request secured by Assemblymember Dr. Joaquin Arambula (D–Fresno), according to SJVSun.com
Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer later vetoed the move but unfortunately, as Live Action News previously documented, the Fresno City Council was able to successfully override Mayor Dyer’s veto.
Kansas City, Missouri
Live Action News previously documented that the Kansas City Council Office approved a measure that could provide a $300 travel stipend for city workers seeking an abortion, according to KCTV5. The resolution declares, “reproductive rights are fundamental human rights and criminalizing access to reproductive rights is a form of discrimination against women, girls and others who can become pregnant.”
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey’s proposed 2023 budget recommends the creation of a $300,000 one-time fund to support abortion access within the city. The move was initiated by pro-abortion organizations that initially requested $800,000 for the “Fund Reproductive Care Minneapolis” project.
Montgomery County, Maryland
Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich recently announced that the county is committing $1 million for grants to fund abortionists in the County. As Live Action News previously documented, a website set up for Montgomery County states, “Resolution 19-1357 provides a total of $1 million for the County’s FY 2023 Abortion, Reproductive Health, and Related Services Access (ARHRSA) Grants Program, with individual awards ranging from a minimum award of $50,000 and a maximum award of $500,000, for a performance period of up to one year. The target population for this grant are women seeking access to abortion, reproductive health, and related services as well as the staff providing these services.”
The grants will be administered by Montgomery County’s Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of Grants Management for “wraparound services to those who are accessing abortion services,” as well as “organizations in the County that provide abortion services, or that refer patients to abortion services as part of comprehensive family planning and reproductive health education.” In addition, the funding will provide “aid to organizations that are fighting legal battles on behalf of those seeking access to abortion services” and “[s]ecurity for providers who offer direct abortion services or referral to abortion services.”
The monies will also go toward “support” for abortionists including “relocation costs, training costs for new providers, or other startup costs” and the funds will “facilitate providers of abortion services to offer reduced cost, low cost, or no cost abortion services to women who have financial hardships, to ensure equitable access to abortion services.”
The news comes as an “all trimester” abortion facility, Partners in Abortion Care, opens in the state. Founders Morgan Nuzzo and Diane Horvath are currently crowdfunding for $500,000 for the facility.
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville’s Metro council members are “trying to get Metro Council to approve a grant for Planned Parenthood to help Nashvillians travel out of the state to get an abortion,” WSMV Nashville reported. The media outlet said the group has not nailed down where the funds would come from but said they are seeking a “memorandum of understanding with a community partner like Planned Parenthood.” They added, “$200,000 would go to sex education; $150,000 would go to sex supplies, like condoms; and $150,000 would help people access abortions outside Tennessee.”
Live Action News previously documented that, according to the Metro Council agenda, the City Council wants to grant Planned Parenthood $500,000. The measure, sponsored by council members Delishia Porterfield, Sandra Sepulveda, Emily Benedict, Ginny Welsch, Freddie O’Connell, and Bob Mendes, has now been referred to the October 4th Budget and Finance Committee, where members will decide if they will appropriate “five-hundred thousand dollars ($500,000) from the unencumbered balance of appropriations to the Metropolitan Council Office [$100,000], Mayor’s Office [$100,000], and Nashville Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure [300,000] for the purpose of funding a grant to Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi.”
New York City, New York
On September 13, 2022, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and the city council’s Women’s Caucus announced what they described as “the largest commitment of municipal funds by any city in the United States.” The New York City Council is providing $1 million towards expanding access to abortion to be “divided equally between the New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF), which supports anyone who is unable to fully pay for an abortion and is living in or traveling to New York, and the Brigid Alliance, which provides logistical support (travel, lodging, childcare, etc.) for people seeking abortions.”
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
In August, Mayor Jim Kenney and city leaders announced that “the City of Philadelphia will provide $500,000 in funding for the Abortion Liberation Fund of PA (ALF-PA), which provides emergency financial assistance to people seeking an abortion they are unable to use their insurance to cover and cannot afford.” Founded in 1985 in response to the Pennsylvania General Assembly eliminating Medicaid funding for abortions, “ALF-PA has provided funding to thousands of individuals seeking abortions, including more than 3,200 people in fiscal year 2021,” the news release also stated. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, a lawsuit has been filed against the city challenging the funding move.
Seattle, Washington
In June, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced his administration would seek “to invest $250,000 in efforts to expand access to reproductive health care…” In August, the City passed multiple measures to make the city a sanctuary for abortion, including CB 120366, which allocates, “$250,000 of city funds to fund expanded access to reproductive healthcare by making an investment in Northwest Abortion Access Fund.”
“The city is also maintaining a new Protecting Abortion Access in Seattle page to keep track of legislative updates and to link to resources. It includes statistics documenting the scale of need for the health service — there were more than 16,000 abortions reported in Washington in 2020 — and the challenges people here may face including around 10% of women living in a Washington county without an abortion provider, according to a 2017 report,” CapitolHillSeattle.com reported.
St. Louis, Missouri
In July, according to a news release, “Mayor Tishaura O. Jones signed Board Bill 61, creating a Reproductive Equity Fund to support St. Louisans at every stage of pregnancy. The fund will support local providers offering postpartum support, lactation help, doula assistance, and access to abortion through logistical support.”
In July, Missouri’s Attorney General Eric Schmitt sued the city, arguing that the measure, which CNN reported would set aside $1 million for abortion logistical support, violates state law. “In managing that fund, public employees will be assisting or encouraging abortion by processing claims for public funds to cover costs incurred in obtaining abortions,” Schmitt said in a written statement.
States that fund abortion
California
In June, the California state budget allocated $20 million to the Abortion Practical Support Fund, a public-private fund that provides grants to nonprofit organizations that help low-income Californians obtain an abortion, CNN reported. In addition, the state created a website, Abortion.ca.gov, as part of the governor’s pledge to make California a sanctuary for women seeking abortions, and has placed billboards in Republican states directing women to the website. It lists the location of 166 abortion facilities statewide, and according to media reports, the website “lets teenagers in other states know they don’t need their parents’ permission to get an abortion in the state.”
Maryland
Earlier this year, lawmakers in the state passed House Bill 937, known as the Abortion Care Access Act, which allocates $3.5 million a year for abortion training. The purpose of the program is to “expand the number of health care professionals with abortion care training and increase the racial and ethnic diversity among health care professionals with abortion care training.”
Massachusetts
In June, MassLive.com reported, “The Massachusetts Senate…allocated $2 million to cover security infrastructure at reproductive health care facilities. The House of Representatives, meanwhile, approved $500,000 in its fiscal 2023 budget.”
New Mexico
In August, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an executive order directing the Department of Finance and Administration to designate $10 million for a state-funded abortion facility. The Albuquerque Journal reported that the abortion facility would be built “in Doña Ana County — likely in or around Las Cruces,” and would come from “infrastructure funding allocated annually by the governor.” The paper also noted that the “pledged funding could be largely contingent on the outcome of the November general election.” Read more at Live Action News here.
New York
Earlier in the year, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced the state was allocating $35 million to support the abortion industry.
Oregon
In March 2022, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown (D) created a $15 million reproductive health equity fund through HB 5202. “The funds will cover supports such as travel and lodging for patients and expand provider network capacity,” according to AmericanProgress.org. “The funds could be administered to health care providers who are looking to increase their supports and infrastructure, buy more equipment, expand their workforce, and workforce development,” An Do, the executive director of Planned Parenthood Advocates of Oregon told KEZI.com. “But it also could go places like the Northwest Abortion Access Fund, which is a fund that has a hotline, and patients can call into this hotline, and this nonprofit basically connects them with the travel funds or the procedure funds that they need,” Do said.
Washington
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) “announced $1 million in emergency funds for reproductive care clinics in the state,” AmericanProgress.org also reported.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]
In The Genital Mutilation Market, Business Is Booming
BY: JAY RICHARDS OCTOBER 14, 2022
Market research predicts that revenue for wrongly termed ‘gender-affirming care’ will grow to $5 billion by the end of this decade.
The risk in any grim line of work is that you get used to it — that true horrors cease to appear horrible. I assume the folks who clean up crime scenes and conduct autopsies get used to their work. Otherwise, they’d crack.
I spend my days studying a new line of business called “gender-affirming care.” That’s a euphemism for the current craze of treating teenagers who struggle with gender dysphoria. In response, doctors who practice “gender-affirming care” try to drug and cut these young bodies to fit their self-diagnosed internal sense of gender. This internal sense is called “gender identity.” Don’t ask for a better explanation. There isn’t one.
I’m so used to reading about “top surgeries,” “bottom surgeries,” and sterilized teenagers that I fear I’m growing jaded. Honestly, that’s a risk. But even I wasn’t prepared for the report on the “sex reassignment surgery” market just released by Grand View Research.
The U.S. market for such surgeries, we are told, “was valued at USD 1.9 billion in 2021 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.23% from 2022 to 2030.” At that rate, the market revenue will grow to $5 billion at the end of this decade. Business is booming because of “rising incidences of gender dysphoria and the increasing number of people opting for gender confirmation surgeries.”
The report offers no commentary or explanation for this surprising fact.
The report goes on to repeat the common claims of gender ideologues, about how these surgeries “help” people with gender dysphoria — a claim for which there’s no good evidence. But they’re just repeating ad copy. Grand View’s expertise is in market analysis.
Apparently, the market for these surgeries had slowed a bit during the Covid-19 lockdowns, with unemployment and lack of disposable income among would-be customers. But the “good news” is that the market is heating up again, in part because of an “improving reimbursement scenario.” That’s market-forecast speak for the fact that insurers such as “Aetna and Unicare provide insurance for necessary surgical procedures, such as salpingo-oophorectomy, hysterectomy, orchiectomy, or ovariectomy.”
It’s a stretch to call the removal of healthy penises, ovaries, testicles, fallopian tubes, and uteruses “necessary.” But in cutting-edge medicine, I presume one must expect some stretching of semantics.
And then there are the Medicaid dollars. “In the U.S.,” the report notes, “around 152,000 transgender individuals are enrolled in Medicaid and only 69,000 among them have access to gender-affirming care coverage under state law.”
That hinders growth in this market segment. But how long can such hold-out states resist joining the right side of history? And how long can they hold out against the “government support” which “is also driving the market”?
For now at least, the market cleaves into just two segments: males who want to look like females (male-to-female) and females who want to look like males (female-to-male). The latter segment dominated in 2021 and is projected to do so for the foreseeable future. Why? Because of “continuous innovations in metoidioplasty, phalloplasty, scrotoplasty, and chest reconstructing surgeries.” That is, new and improved versions of fake penises and scrotums for women born without them.
This is hardly where we want the American economy to demonstrate its innovative potential.
Indeed, if anything, the report underplays the ghoulish revenue potential for these procedures, since it fails to mention the complications. Simply cutting out a uterus, or cutting off a penis, may only generate revenue once. These tend to be one-and-done operations. But constructing a simulacrum of a penis and attaching it to a woman involves the rerouting of blood vessels, skin, urethra, and nerves. This is far from simple. The initial surgery can take many hours. The follow-up for complications, infections, and maintenance can stretch out for years.
Consider this testimony from just one such patient, Scott Newgent:
During my own transition, I had seven surgeries. I also had a massive pulmonary embolism, a helicopter life-flight ride, an emergency ambulance ride, a stress-induced heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection due to using the wrong skin during a (failed) phalloplasty, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, the loss of all my hair, (only partially successful) arm reconstructive surgery, permanent lung and heart damage, a cut bladder, insomnia-induced hallucinations—oh and frequent loss of consciousness due to pain from the hair on the inside of my urethra. All this led to a form of PTSD that made me a prisoner in my apartment for a year. Between me and my insurance company, medical expenses exceeded $900,000.
From Newgent’s perspective, all this was no doubt … unpleasant. But given the tone of the report, I’m surprised Grand View Research missed the chance to point investors toward this serious, long-term, payola prospect.
And this is to say nothing of the life-long need for cross-sex hormones. You see, even after a woman has had her breasts, uterus, and fallopian tubes removed, and the skin, nerves, and muscle from her forearm stripped and refashioned in a neo-penis, every cell of her body is going to go right on thinking it’s female. That’s hard on the patient, but if she lives to be 70 or 80, can you imagine the revenue from exogenous testosterone alone? How did this financial research firm miss this part of the story?
But even as it is, this clinical market analysis applied to teenage castration and sterilization is deeply disturbing. The challenge of the present moment is to wake up millions of Americans who are only vaguely aware of these horrors, and then to channel their shock and outrage into actions that will end them once and for all — and to do that before they, before we, grow jaded and complacent.
Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., is author of many books including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012), and the William E. Simon senior research fellow in Heritage’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society.
https://thefederalist.com/2022/10/14/in-the-sex-reassignment-surgery-market-business-is-booming/
Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
January 21, 1996
Three thousand years ago King David declared that we were “fearfully and wonderfully made . . . and that my soul knoweth right well.” Today we would have to say that what he knew about it was very little. It is obvious even on the surface, as many have observed down through the centuries, that we are an extraordinarily wonderfully wrought creation, that the human body is, indeed, astonishing in many ways. The founders of modern science were Christians. They believed such things as: Examining the creation would bring us closer to the Creator, or that in science, said the founder of astronomy, we were merely thinking God’s thoughts after Him. But evolution teaches differently.
Tucker Carlson: This should be a crime — it’s dark and horrifying
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