Officials of Planned Parenthood of Minnesota and the Dakotas see the report as "absolutely good news for the health of women across Minnesota," said spokeswoman Kathi Di Nicola. "The best way to sustain those reductions is to continue to provide affordable birth control" and sex education to the state's women.From the Minnesota Independent:
"The overall decline in abortion in nearly every category is positive news and a goal that PPMNS works toward every day in our clinics across the region," [Di Nicola] said.I wonder why Planned Parenthood sees a decline in abortion as "absolutely good news" given its view that abortion is not only morally unproblematic, but also a Constitutional and human right that should be funded with taxpayer dollars.
While MCCL is openly hostile to PPMNS, Di Nicola offered an olive branch in working to reduce abortions in Minnesota through education and contraception.
"We again call on groups like the [sic] MCCL to join with us in taking tangible, common-sense steps to prevent unintended pregnancy and reduce the need for abortion in Minnesota," she said.
Moreover, if a decline in abortions is "a goal that PPMNS works toward every day," how did Planned Parenthood manage to increase its abortions to a record 3,948 last year while the total number of abortions went down 6.5 percent? Planned Parenthood now performs 30 percent of abortions in Minnesota, its largest percentage since abortion reporting began in 1998. Planned Parenthood performed nearly 1,200 more abortions than the next largest provider.
Of course, none of this should be surprising: Planned Parenthood is a business that profits greatly by performing abortions. It's only surprising that the group can get away with claiming it wants to decrease the number of abortions.
One online comment on the MN Independent story puts it well: "It must be good news for them to see that abortions overall are decreasing, so they can say their efforts to reduce them are working. Except they also get to increase their abortions while everyone else's decrease. I guess they really CAN have it both ways!"
The Independent article claims: "While MCCL is openly hostile to PPMNS, Di Nicola offered an olive branch in working to reduce abortions." If Planned Parenthood were really interested in common ground and reducing the number of abortions, it would join with us in supporting common-sense, modest, widely-supported legislative efforts such as parental notification and informed consent requirements, bans on taxpayer funding of abortion, sex-selection abortion, etc.
But Planned Parenthood won't accept any limits on abortion. Its work is aimed at performing more and more abortions, even as abortions statewide decline.
