When Leana Wen was unceremoniously fired as president of Planned Parenthood, she penned a New York Times op-ed citing two reasons for her ouster: 1) Criticism that she “did not prioritize abortion enough.” 2) Resistance to her “attempt to depoliticize Planned Parenthood.”
Considering Planned Parenthood’s insistence that abortion makes up only 3% of its services (a wildly misleading claim given “Three Pinocchios” by the Washington Post), Wen’s focus on the other 97% would seem pretty reasonable. Under her predecessor Cecile Richards (a sharp political operator whose stated goal was to make Planned Parenthood the most powerful player on the Left), both breast exams and cancer screening and prevention services fell by two-thirds. About 95% of Planned Parenthood’s “services to pregnant women” were aborting their children, while adoption referrals made up less than 1%.
Maybe this imbalance is because abortion is big business. Planned Parenthood earns as much as 55% of its nongovernment health services revenue from abortions.
By resisting Wen’s efforts to “depoliticize” America’s biggest abortion business, Planned Parenthood has once again staked itself out as a nakedly political organization. In 2018, it spent millions of dollars lobbying Congress and supporting Democrats. In the election cycle that same year, Planned Parenthood donated to 118 Democrats ($864,398) and 2 Republicans ($5,700).
In the aftermath of her termination, Wen was criticized as being not merely apolitical, but too conservative. She envisioned Planned Parenthood transcending partisan politics and finding common ground, but that was seen as “mission creep” by the board and entrenched staff. What exactly is your mission if “work[ing] to change the perception that Planned Parenthood was just a progressive political entity and show that it was first and foremost a mainstream health care organization” constitutes mission creep?
The first doctor to lead the organization in two decades, Wen got the boot for having the audacity to assert that the organization billing itself as “America’s most trusted provider of reproductive health care” should focus its energy on expanding its menu of wellness services, not the number of politicians committed to increasing Planned Parenthood’s revenue in office.
Wen is learning what many of us have known all along: Planned Parenthood is not in the business of providing women’s healthcare. It is in the business of providing abortions and electing partisan politicians committed to abortion over authentic, comprehensive healthcare.
Katie Glenn (@KatieGlenn_) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is the Government Affairs Counsel at Americans United for Life (@AUL).
