Planned Parenthood Received Nearly $2 Billion in Federal Funding over Three-Year Span, Congressional Probe Finds

Abortion advocacy groups received $1.89 billion in federal funding between fiscal year 2019 and 2021, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office.

The report, which was commissioned by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) and Representative Chris Smith (R., N.J.) in January 2022, found Planned Parenthood received $1.78 billion over the three-year period.

That funding included $1.53 billion from Medicaid, Medicare, and CHIP reimbursements; $148.5 million in grants and cooperative agreements; and $90.41 million in loans forgiven in the Paycheck Protection Program. 

The PPP program was intended to assist independent small businesses with fewer than 500 employees. Planned Parenthood affiliates were warned they were ineligible for PPP funding because Planned Parenthood’s corporate office supervises and controls its affiliates, providing considerable funding and support, the report notes. Still, more than three dozen Planned Parenthood affiliates applied for and received PPP loans.

Over that three-year period, Planned Parenthood performed 1.11 million abortions.

During the Obama Administration, Title X was Planned Parenthood’s second largest source of federal funding; it expended $61 million in Title X funds in 2016 alone. In 2019, the Trump Administration required all grantees receiving Title X funding to agree not to refer for abortion and to maintain physical and financial separation from abortion providers.

Planned Parenthood chose not to comply and therefore forfeited Title X funding under the Trump admin, with the GAO finding that that refusal “led almost all affiliates to discontinue using family planning grants under Title X” during 2020 and 2021.

But under the Biden administration, the Department of Health and Human Services increased obligations to Planned Parenthood 373 percent, from $5.71 million to $27.06 million, the report found.

Meanwhile, the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) received $2.03 million in federal funding over the three-year period. The group has 150 member associations that operate in 146 countries. It provided 5 million “abortion-related services” in 2022 alone, including 14,000 chemical abortions.

Blackburn and Smith’s offices note that a January 2023 Marist poll that found 78 percent of Americans oppose using taxpayer dollars to fund abortions in other countries.

In May 2017, the Trump administration implemented the “Protecting Life in Global Health Assistance (PLGHA),” which prohibited foreign aid funding from going to foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that promote or perform abortions.

IPPF declined to comply and reported losing $100 million. It says services provided by member associations fell up to 42 percent from 2016 to 2017. Before President Biden rescinded the policy in January 2021, IPPF received less than $1 million combined in 2020 and 2021 in previously obligated funds.

MSI Reproductive Choices (MSI), another international organization that operates in 37 countries, had provided 4 million abortions and post-abortion care services as of 2020. The organization has said it aims to provide one out of every three abortions in the countries where it operates by 2030.

MSI received $1.35 million between 2019 and 2021, after receiving tens of millions of dollars every year under the Obama administration.

Finally, four domestic regional abortion providers received $107.74 million in federal funding over the same time period.

“It is appalling that big abortion providers are continuing to receive billions of dollars in federal taxpayer funding,” Blackburn said in a statement to National Review. “While small businesses struggled to make ends meet during the pandemic, Planned Parenthood illegally siphoned over $90 million from the Paycheck Protection Program, specifically designed to help our mom and pop shops keep their doors open.”

“The American people want their tax dollars spent responsibly and in line with our nation’s values — not on the Left’s abortion-on-demand agenda. I will never stop fighting to protect the unborn and end taxpayer-funded support for the abortion industry,” she said.