Another New Mega-Clinic Planned for Massachusetts: Planned Parenthood Remaking Abortion Empire with Openings, Closings, Mergers.

The announcement that Planned Parenthood is building yet another mega-clinic, this time a new three-story "reproductive health center" in Worcester, Massachusetts, comes on the heels of similar stories of major building projects by PPFA affiliates in Illinois, Colorado, Florida, and Oregon. Newspapers are carrying news of mergers between different Planned Parenthood affiliates across the county, along with stories of individual Planned Parenthood clinic openings or closings. So what's up at America's largest abortion chain?

Putting all the pieces together, it becomes apparent that Planned Parenthood, despite record revenues and record numbers of abortions, is undergoing a major overhaul.1 It describes itself as a service-oriented non-profit, but Planned Parenthood has been engaging in some very aggressive corporate restructuring. It is pruning non-performing clinics and affiliates, reducing expensive middle management, and maximizing the most profitable aspects of its business. In the parlance of business, especially applicable in this case, Planned Parenthood is making itself "leaner and meaner."

Massachusetts Gets a Mega-Clinic

After a year of tinkering with plans to renovate a 33,000-square-foot two-story medical office building, the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts (PPLM) finally decided in February that it would raze the old building and construct a new modern three-story building to house its Worcester "reproductive health care center" (Worcester Telegram & Gazette, 2/21/08).

Officials for PPLM said that the move from the clinic's current location to a new, larger building was "driven by a need for more and higher-quality space closer to public transportation." The clinic that the new mega-clinic will replace saw about 11,000 patients in 2006, officials told the press (Telegram & Gazette, 1/18/07). The Worcester clinic has been offering abortions since 1982 (Harvard Crimson, 10/29/94).

Further details on the facilities, services, and staffing were not available and no date was given for the construction or completion of the new mega-clinic. A city councilwoman said the new building would be a "substantial upgrade aesthetically" to the neighborhood and noted that it had the support of local residents and businesses (Telegram & Gazette, 2/21/08).

From Mega-Clinic to Merger

NRL News readers already followed the story of an earlier mega-clinic built by a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Aurora, Illinois (NRL News, September 2007). Recent news regarding that Chicago-area affiliate begins to put these and other recent moves in a larger perspective.

Chicago was one of the affiliates to establish what Planned Parenthood likes to call "express clinics"small storefront operations that offer contraceptives, STD testing, and the like. While these "express clinics" would not do surgical abortions, they would be able to direct abortion clients to the larger Planned Parenthood medical clinics. (There is reason to believe that some of these smaller clinics may have been offering clients RU486, the abortion pill.)

In January, the Chicago affiliate announced that it was closing its Naperville, Illinois, express clinic "[d]ue to the opening of our greatly expanded Aurora Health Center" (www.plannedparenthood.org/centerDetails.asp?id=8, accessed 2/12/08).

News of that clinic closing was closely followed by the revelation that Illinois' five Planned Parenthood affiliates would be merging on March 1, 2008, into one statewide affiliate, headed by the man who ran the Chicago affiliate. According to the Lincoln Courier, Planned Parenthood affiliates in Springfield, Decatur, Champaign, Peoria, and Chicago were merging "to cope with rising costs" (2/8/08).

The newspaper reported that Planned Parenthood's Lincoln clinic had already closed, due to "funding problems," and said that "[m]ost signs indicate that other Planned Parenthood agencies also may close over the course of the merger."

Joyce Harant, president and CEO of Heart of Illinois Planned Parenthood, told the Courier that flat funding and a changing health care environment were the main reasons behind the consolidation. The Courier reported that the "merger will aid in the rising cost of birth control and salaries, and it will allow local affiliates the start-up money to convert to electronic medical record keeping."

CEO positions at the four non-Chicago affiliates will be eliminated, along with local boards of directors. Judith Barringer, CEO of the Springfield affiliate, had been receiving a $66,000 annual salary, the State Journal-Register reported (2/8/08).

Stephen Trombley, head of the Chicago affiliate CEO who pushed through the Aurora mega-clinic, remains on as the CEO of the new statewide affiliate, Planned Parenthood of Illinois. His new salary is not disclosed, but the group's tax return shows that he was paid $260,414 in the fiscal year ending in June 2006 as head of the Chicago organization (Journal-Register, 2/8/08).

The Meaning of the Mergers

As noted, the Illinois merger is only one of several recent consolidations among Planned Parenthood affiliates in Kentucky, Michigan, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Arizona (see sidebar).

So what do all the mergers, closings, and openings tell us?

PPFA presents itself as a non-profit that puts a priority on women's reproductive health. But PPFA closes clinics when there is less of a demand for services and inadequate income to justify costly staff or facilities. If a larger, better-staffed, better-equipped location is nearby, the convenience of clients takes a back seat to the corporate bottom line.

New clinics will be opened whenever and wherever Planned Parenthood senses a lucrative untapped market. Replacing an express location in a strip mall (which may sell a couple of cheap contraceptive packs a week) with a mega-clinic performing several abortions a day (each costing at least $400) surely does not mean a better community but it certainly does mean a better balance sheet.

Total revenues for the national organization were $902.8 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2006. Thirty-four percent of that, or $305.1 million, came from "Government Grants and Contracts." Checking previous Planned Parenthood annual reports, we see that the figure for government funding nationwide has risen each year at least as far back as 2001.

While funding of affiliates in individual states may be affected by legislative or judicial activity, the charge that, nationally, Planned Parenthood is being crippled by government funding cuts can only be seen as a calculated ruse. It is not as if Planned Parenthood is strapped for cash

But histrionics about funding shortfalls and closing clinics because of "government cutbacks" make for good fundraising letters, and help generate pressure on legislators to open the spigot wider.

What the consolidations do is allow Planned Parenthood to cut out a lot of its less productive middle management without jettisoning its top regional performers. Heads of affiliates that haven't produced will be gone, while those like Chicago's Steve Trombley will be retained and promoted to head the new state affiliate.

Planned Parenthood has tried to minimize the importance of abortion to the organization, but abortion easily accounts for at least 31% of the organization's national clinic income.2 Those clinics that offer abortions have the potential for higher income.

Because of the relative cost of different services, the more clinics that offer abortions, the more that add abortion to their list of services, the greater the income potential. This explains, in a business sense, both the reason behind the recent construction of several abortion mega-clinics and Planned Parenthood's push to see more of its non-surgical clinics offer RU486, the abortion pill.

Joyce Harant, head of one of the Illinois affiliates undergoing consolidation, told the Lincoln Courier that the merger reflects a long-term trend. She told the Courier there were 180 or 190 Planned Parenthood affiliates when she started in 1979, but said that number will be down to 105 or 110 when this latest merger is completed (2/8/08).

In one sense, it is encouraging to know that dwindling business and public exposure of Planned Parenthood's agenda has caused many of these affiliates and their clinics to close. But ever-increasing numbers of abortions, steadily rising incomes, mega-building projects, and splashy mergers are a warning that far from fading, the abortion giant is becoming a more efficient killing machine.

This ruthlessness is at odds with the carefully crafted image of compassion and concern for women that Planned Parenthood has invested so much money to maintain. This provides an opening for pro-lifers to share the facts. The more the public knows about abortion and the methods and motives of the abortion industry, the more moneyand more liveswill be saved from the clinics and their coffers.

Notes

1. According to its 200506 Annual Report, Planned Parenthood pulled in record revenues (nearly a billion dollars in fiscal 200506) and did a record number of abortions (264,943) in 2005, even while the number of abortions in the U.S. was reaching its lowest level since mid 1970s.

2. With the average cost a woman pays for a standard surgical abortion at 10 weeks being $413 and Planned Parenthood performing 264,943 abortions a year, the income from abortion for Planned Parenthood is at least $109,421,459 against the organization's total clinic income of $345.1 million. With many Planned Parenthood clinics advertising and performing more expensive chemical or later term abortions, that number and the relevant percentage of clinic income are certainly much higher.