A new video released by pro-life group Live Action reveals that Planned Parenthood has long been imposing abortion quotas on its clinics nationwide, incentivizing its workers to convince women to terminate their pregnancies. In an interview with Live Action, a former Planned Parenthood manager and a former clinic nurse explain how these quotas were enforced by upper management.
According to Sue Thayer, former manager of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Storm Lake, Iowa, the organization’s executives would reward clinics that met their abortion targets with pizza parties or extra paid time off. Clinics that didn’t offer abortions were given quotas for abortion referrals made to other Planned Parenthood facilities.
“I trained my staff the way that I was trained, which was to really encourage women to choose abortion and to have it at Planned Parenthood because it counts towards our goal,” Thayer said.
“I felt like I was more of a salesman sometimes, to sell abortions,” said former Planned Parenthood nurse Marianne Anderson. “We were constantly told we have quotas to meet to stay open.”
Thayer explained that she and other workers were trained to persuade pregnant women that abortion was the only plausible option, especially if the women were hesitant about having the procedure done:
If they’d say, “I’m not able to pay [my bill] today,” then we would say something like, “Well, if you can’t pay $10 today, how are you going to take care of a baby? Have you priced diapers? Do you know how much it costs to buy a car seat? Where would you go for help? There’s no place in Storm Lake (or whatever town they were in), you know, where you can get help as a pregnant mom. So really, don’t you think your smartest choice is termination?”
Here’s the full video:
This isn’t the first time that the abortion giant has been accused of instituting abortion quotas. For example, former clinic manager Abby Johnson — who now works as a pro-life activist — explained that Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, the group’s second-largest affiliate, gave an award to the Aurora, Colo., clinic for “exceeding abortion visits first half of fiscal year 2012 compared to first half of fiscal year 2013.”
As Johnson pointed out in her letter, it seems strange for a group that claims abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” to institute quotas and reward its clinics for performing the procedure as frequently as possible.
The House last week passed a bill to divert $500 million in government funding from Planned Parenthood to thousands of healthcare centers across the country that don’t perform abortion, and two senators introduced a similar version of the bill this week. While Congress was able to pass such a bill last year, it is likely to succeed this time around because President Donald Trump has already agreed to sign it.
Meanwhile, a recent Knights of Columbus-Marist poll indicates that nearly two-thirds of Americans oppose the taxpayer funding of abortion. This latest video from Live Action substantiates the case to defund Planned Parenthood, as it confirms the group’s desire to profit from abortion at the expense of vulnerable women and children.