Planned Parenthood’s International Reach ‘Is the Perfect Picture of Ideological Colonialism’

Planned Parenthood’s most recent annual report highlighted increased activity in the U.S., including 1.05 million patients, 9.13 million services, 2.25 million birth control services, 392,715 abortions, and another 1.7 million appointments booked online. But to the dismay of pro-life activists, what may be the most shocking aspect of the data from the report was not the national impact, but the international effect Planned Parenthood has had — a mission they use taxpayer dollars to fund.

As emphasized by two of Family Research Council’s experts, Arielle Del Turco and Mary Szoch, the abortion organization “has access to the $699,300,000 in U.S. taxpayer dollars that Planned Parenthood received in Fiscal Year 2022.”

On Friday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice pointed out, Planned Parenthood is not “using all of that to profit from killing babies here in the United States. … They are also promoting abortion internationally with special attention [given] to infiltrate very poor, vulnerable countries that have legitimate needs.” Specifically, he added, “[T]hey’re going there in order to dismantle all the pro-life protections that many of those countries have.” And Hice noted that the authors of the report are “bragging about all of this.”

Del Turco, who serves as FRC’s director of the Center for Religious Liberty, agreed. “[T]hey’re targeting these poorer countries,” she said, “and they’re going in and … training tens of thousands of [locals] … essentially to be activists for abortion, to change these laws from the inside out and remove pro-life protections.”

Del Turco continued, “Planned Parenthood, in … its most recent annual report, bragged that they had overturned in the last calendar year 112 pro-life policies in these countries.” Which, as she emphasized, is “112 places across eight different countries where unborn babies had their protections stripped from them, in large part because of the work of Planned Parenthood.” What we should be asking, Del Turco continued, is “[w]hy are we funding an organization that is doing that?” Hice noted that’s not only “a great question,” but it’s one that “demands an answer.”

As stated in the article by Del Turco and Szoch, who is the director of FRC’s Center for Human Dignity, the duo restated that Planned Parenthood “is the perfect picture of ideological colonialism,” the irony of which she commented on to Hice. “The Left supposedly hates colonialism, where the West goes into other countries and imposes its norms,” she observed. “But this is exactly what Planned Parenthood is doing. Planned Parenthood is going into countries where both the law and the culture are very pro-life, where they completely reject abortion, and they are trying to change these countries from the inside out. It’s not organic. It’s coming from the outside, from Planned Parenthood, and from the millions of dollars that they are funneling into these countries.”

Hice posed the question: “[W]hat do we need to do to try to … ensure that no U.S. tax dollars go to fund … organizations … that promote abortions?” Most obviously, Del Turco replied that we need to recognize it’s “common sense” not to use the dimes of Americans to fund a radical leftist ideology — many of whom are pro-life. “No American taxpayer dime should be going to Planned Parenthood,” she insisted. “This should be a priority of Republican politicians completely defunding Planned Parenthood and other organizations that perform or support abortion … at home, but especially overseas.” Most Americans, Del Turco emphasized, don’t want their money being used to support abortion.

“And we need to be listening to the American people on that,” Del Turco concluded. “[W]e as Americans should be focused on really funding organizations that do support life and that support life abroad, and investing in pro-lifers who are having to now fight off these pro-abortion attacks from Planned Parenthood.”