Planned Parenthood Offers Teens Guide to Pro-Abortion Activism, Warns Them to Avoid Pregnancy Centers

Planned Parenthood’s sex-education courses on abortion instruct students in eighth grade and above to donate to pro-abortion initiatives and “avoid crisis pregnancy centers.”

National Review completed four abortion-related courses — “Pregnancy, Childbirth, Adoption & Abortion,” “How Abortion Works,” “Barriers to Abortion Care,” and “Supporting Abortion Access” — featured in Planned Parenthood’s Sex Ed To-Go program, which offers free online sex-education lessons for students and teachers. The courses encourage teenagers to embrace pro-abortion activism and warn young mothers to reject assistance from any organization that doesn’t promote abortion.

“One of the key lessons we hope you take away is that for most people, abortions are much harder to access than they need to be,” one lesson tells students. “As a member of your community, there are plenty of ways you can be a strong advocate for abortion access and contribute to making abortions less stigmatized and more accessible.”

Planned Parenthood warns students that crisis pregnancy centers — sometimes referred to as “pregnancy resource centers,” “pregnancy help centers,” or “pregnancy care centers” — are organizations “funded by anti-abortion groups that use misinformation to discourage pregnant people from seeking abortion care.” The sex-education program further claims that crisis pregnancy centers are “not licensed medical facilities” and “their staff are usually not licensed medical professionals.”

“They [crisis pregnancy centers] provide inaccurate information, like saying abortion leads to infertility or mental health problems or birth control is ineffective, unsafe, or causes cancer. (There is no scientific evidence to support any of those statements.),” Planned Parenthood states.

The lesson includes suggestions on how to “spot” and “avoid” crisis pregnancy centers, stating that these facilities often do not list abortions as an available service. A worksheet directs students to search online for nearby clinics to determine which ones perform abortions and which are crisis pregnancy centers

“Pregnancy centers offer real hope, providing women with accurate information, resources, education, and support,” Tessa Cox, a researcher at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, told National Review. “A survey from the Charlotte Lozier Institute estimates that in 2022, pregnancy centers provided over $367 million of goods and services at virtually no cost to clients. Over eight in ten pregnancy centers provide medical care, adhering to the same state and federal requirements as other medical providers, and more than one in four pregnancy center staff were licensed medical professionals, with an additional 5,400 licensed medical volunteers giving their time and skill.”

Planned Parenthood offers a wide-range of educational videos for teens, some of which focus on how to obtain so-called gender-affirming care while avoiding safeguards such as mental health consultation, as National Review previously reported.

Planned Parenthood did not respond to a request for comment.

A How to Guide for Abortion Activism

One Planned Parenthood lesson gives students step-by-step instructions on how to obtain an abortion: Find an abortion provider, figure out payment for the procedure, schedule an appointment, and book a follow-up for after the abortion. A course notes that volunteers may escort patients to abortion clinics because “it is common for anti-abortion protesters to stand outside of abortion provider offices in an attempt to intimidate patients.”

The Planned Parenthood courses criticize “abortion stigma,” which is defined as “a set of attitudes and beliefs — conscious or unconscious — that abortion is bad, shameful, or wrong,” because it might make a patient feel “ashamed” and possibly makes it easier to pass restrictions.

The “Supporting Abortion Access” course explicitly encourages students to be pro-abortion activists and aims to teach students how to communicate with “non-stigmatizing language.” The lesson includes a worksheet titled “Being an Abortion Advocate” that suggests using phrases such as “abortion care” instead of “reproductive health care,” “abortion later in pregnancy” rather than “late-term abortion,” and “complex” or “personal decision” rather than “heartbreaking” or “tragic.”

“It’s better to talk about ‘reducing unintended pregnancy’ or ‘keeping abortions safe and legal,’” says part of the lesson. “Saying ‘keep abortion rare’ can communicate that abortions are undesirable and show judgment toward the person who needs one. Abortions are common, and there’s nothing wrong with having an abortion.”

The lesson tells students that one way to support “abortion access” is to donate to an abortion fund or an abortion provider such as Planned Parenthood. “The work to make abortion safe, accessible and stigma-free for everyone is essential,” says the lesson.

One course provides advice on how to counsel a woman who had an abortion, telling students to “validate their feelings,” “avoid judgement,” “avoid platitudes” such as “everything happens for a reason,” and “avoid religious or political debates.”

Navigating Abortion Obstacles

Planned Parenthood groups obstacles to obtaining an abortion into three categories, namely legal, logistical, and social. Legal barriers mentioned in the lessons include patient age restrictions, waiting periods, gestational age restrictions, and site restrictions.

“Many of these laws aren’t based on medical information or scientific evidence but on people’s opinions of what is right and wrong,” says a course. “Many of these laws also put barriers in the way of people accessing an abortion they have a right to.”

The courses suggest that “barriers” disproportionately affect “Black, Latine, and Indigenous people, immigrants, people living with low incomes, and people in rural areas.” One lesson also claims that it is not only women who have abortions, adding that “trans and gender-expansive people often face additional barriers to accessing affirming, compassionate medical care because of biases and stereotypes of medical providers.”

Planned Parenthood further criticizes policies that require a patient to receive certain documents in advance of an abortion because such policies may delay the procedure, upset the patient, or convince the patient to not have an abortion.

“During a waiting period, a person seeking an abortion is often given informational material to read. The patient must sign an informed consent form and bring a printed copy to their appointment,” the lesson says. “Making sure these forms are filled out, printed, and turned in on time can be a barrier for some people. And in some states, the information abortion patients are required to read is written with the intent to convince them not to have an abortion and may include untrue information about abortion that causes emotional distress.”

A lesson plan acknowledges that states may have different laws regarding parental notification or permission for a minor to undergo an abortion. Planned Parenthood mentions the option of a judicial bypass available in some states, which allows a judge to waive either the parental consent or notification requirement for a minor. However, the lesson warns that “common challenges” in pursuing a judicial bypass are having to explain an absence at school, facing delays in court proceedings that might push the patient beyond a gestational age restriction, and “personal opinions of the judge affecting whether permission is granted.”

Planned Parenthood’s lessons define an “abortion” as “a medical procedure that ends a pregnancy.” The lessons say that medication abortion “causes the uterus to contract and expel the pregnancy,” and misoprostol pills specifically “causes cramping and bleeding that empties your uterus” so that “the pregnancy tissue will come out through your vagina.” “Self-managed abortions” are when abortion pills are consumed outside of a medical facility.

The courses describe a surgical abortion as when “a medical provider opens up the cervix. . . and uses suction to remove pregnancy tissue.” The Planned Parenthood lessons detail two types of surgical abortion, namely vacuum-aspiration abortions that “gently empty the uterus of pregnancy tissue” with a “suctioning tool” and dilation-and-evacuation abortions.

One lesson presents hypothetical scenarios in a mini quiz that asks students to identify the type of abortion (medication, vacuum aspiration, or dilation-and-evacuation) best suited for the patient; the multiple-choice questions do not provide answers that allow selecting birth or adoption. The quiz contains a scenario involving an illegal abortion, for which the “correct” answer is “vacuum aspiration abortion” :

Sandy is 14 weeks pregnant and has decided to have an abortion. She lives in a state where abortions after 6 weeks gestational age are illegal. She works full-time at a restaurant and doesn’t have a day off until next week. She has a car and thinks she can cover gas to travel out of state with tips she earns this week, but she doesn’t have extra cash for a hotel stay overnight.

The Planned Parenthood sex-education program attempts to dispel “myths” and instructs students that abortion is “safe,” “common,” and “does not pose a danger to [a] person’s mental health.”

“Abortion is safer than childbirth,” a course says. “First-trimester abortions don’t cause an increase in infertility (the inability to get pregnant later), miscarriage (unplanned loss of future pregnancies), birth defects or early delivery or low birth weight in later pregnancies. Abortion is not associated with breast cancer and abortion does not pose a danger to [a] person’s mental health.”

“The abortion industry tells women abortion is the safe and easy choice, but too many women have discovered that to be an empty promise,” Cox told National Review. “Multiple studies have found premature death rates are higher following abortion compared to childbirth, and research suggests women are at greater risk of mental health problems after having had an abortion rather than a live birth. A recent study of over a million pregnancies found that compared to women who gave birth, women who had abortions were 81 percent more likely to be hospitalized for a psychiatric reason.”