I am always amazed that Planned Parenthood, masquerading as a charity, gets such loving treatment from our federal government.  A friend of mine was able to elicit a revealing reply recently from Revenue Canada regarding the “charitable status” of Planned Parenthood. If Planned Parenthood isn’t an out-and-out business, than McDonald’s should apply for charitable status today.

Denis Lefebvre, assistant deputy minister, policy and legislation branch, writes: “The confidentiality provisions of the (Income Tax) Act prevent me from discussing the affairs of particular registered charities.”

I disagree, Denis. I think that it’s important for you to determine if PP is a charity or a fraud. At one time, PP gave the illusion to the income tax officials that it was an organization providing “family planning advice” which meant “spacing children,” not killing them in the womb.

Kill them in the womb? That’s what PP does with 164 affiliates operating 915 abortion clinics in the U.S. - many under their own name. They committed 134,277 abortions (3,401 second trimester ones in 1993, an increase of 41 per cent over 1992). PP generates $462.5 million per year income - with $158.8 million of it generated by U.S. government contracts and grants. Wow! Government sources accounted for 34 per cent of PP’s total income in 1993. Income earned is estimated at $40 million from abortions in the same year, based on $296 per abortion. Sources for this information: Planned Parenthood Federation of America Annual Report 1993-1994; PPFA 1994 and a Services Report from the Los Angeles Times Jan. 24, 1995, page C5. (Latest information available).

Major conflict of interest

Barbara Hestrin, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of Canada, even runs a Vancouver abortion clinic. It operates under the misnomer: British Columbia Women’s Hospital and Health Centre Society. Hestrin openly canvassed doctors four years ago when she started an abortion referral business. They charge a fee for some 2,500 abortions they do a year. Denis, if that doesn’t indicate a direct link of PP to a commercial abortion mill - what does?

PP’s Hestrin says they intend to treat abortion not just as surgery, but as an event embedded in the context of a woman’s life. Yes, Barbara, we call it Post-Abortion Syndrome. And thousands of women suffer from it in Canada. Another innovation that PP’s Hestrin promises is to use local, rather than general, anesthesia and allow a woman’s partner or supporter to be present during the abortion. I call it sick - witnessing a killing!

Is PP a not-for-profit operation? Hardly. Abortionists don’t work for nothing. Ask Henry Morgentaler. His abortion chain doesn’t hesitate to get every last nickel out of the taxpayer on a so-much-per-baby contract killing.

Denis writes, “Revenue Canada strives to ensure that only those organizations that meet the legal requirements for registration maintain charitable status and the department selects a number of registered charities to audit each year, either randomly or based on public complaints or on a review of the charities’ annual public information returns.”

Denis, you may be unaware that an unduly high percentage of pro-life organizations are investigated. Right now it’s Alliance for Life and Human Life International who are under the gun. Is that just a coincidence, Denis?

Since when has a chain of abortion clinics become a registered charity? PP blows the trumpet to promote the abortion industry in Canada and the U.S. and operates, as stated, 915 abortion mills in the U.S. If the abortionists are working for mega-bucks - how can PP’s puffing abortion be anything but operating a public relations business on their own behalf, especially when PP is knee-deep in the abortion mill business itself?

As I’m not as bound as you are, Denis, regarding “the confidentiality provisions of the (Income Tax) Act,” I have saved you a trip to the library, but I have told you only a little bit about PP - quoting mostly from their own annual reports. After pondering this information we can both figure out who is telling lies.

Clip my column, readers, and please send it to your local M.P., Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, ON,
K1A 0A6 (No stamp required when House is sitting). Maybe your M.P. can explain how a $462.5 million business passes itself off as a charity. I can’t.