327,653.
That’s the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood in their fiscal year 2013. And you don’t have to take my word for it. Planned Parenthood says so in their 2013-2014 annual report!
And yet there are millions of Americans who think Planned Parenthood doesn’t do abortions.
Don’t believe me? Just look at the responses from this Reuters/Ipsos poll.
They asked people if they would support federal funding for an health organization that also performed abortions. When asked that question, Americans were closely divided with 40.7% saying no and 40.4% saying there should be funding. Almost 19% said they didn’t know.
So what would happen if Reuters asked basically the same question in a different way? What if they asked Americans if they supported federal funding of Planned Parenthood? Shouldn’t the results be the same? After all, Planned Parenthood performed 327,653 abortions in just one year!
But, the poll numbers aren’t the same. In fact, there’s a big change.
When people were asked about support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood, 52.7% of Americans said they supported it — that’s over 12 percentage points higher (a 30% increase). And it’s not just supporters of federal funding who are misinformed. In the Reuters poll, opposition to federal funding of Planned Parenthood isn’t at 40.7% as you would suspect (from the previous question). The number of people who opposed federal funding of Planned Parenthood dropped 10 percentage points from the previous question to 29.9% (a 25% decrease).
This shows us that we have lots of work to do.
Part of the obvious effort is to educate Americans with the cold hard facts: Planned Parenthood received $500 million in federal funding and (by their own record keeping) performed 327,653 in fiscal year 2013.
—
Link to first poll and second poll. Hat tip: @kerpen