PlannedParenthood

Many know Planned Parenthood as the leading abortion provider in the country, or as one of the top left-wing political spenders each election cycle.

Fewer know that Planned Parenthood is now the nation’s leading provider of sex-change procedures for young adults, with astronomical growth from year to year.¹ More Planned Parenthood clinics now provide gender treatments than chemical or surgical abortions.

Planned Parenthood reports providing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery referrals to adults and minors who identify as transgender.² Some affiliates offer other “gender-affirming” interventions for minors without parental consent.³

At least 40,000 patients per year receive sex-change procedures at Planned Parenthood, according to The Free Press, and we estimate at least 100,000 visits are made to Planned Parenthood clinics annually for sex-change purposes.⁴ Data suggests that 1 in 6 teens and young adults who receive cross-sex hormones do so via Planned Parenthood.

Patients can receive hormones on their first visit⁵, often without seeing a doctor⁶, sometimes via telehealth or even over the phone⁷. A referral letter or mental health evaluation is usually not required.

Planned Parenthood’s protocols for sexchange interventions are so lax that they have drawn condemnation from:

• The former president of the US Professional Association for Transgender Health⁸
• The co-founder of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States⁹
• A former transgender employee who was forced to obtain legal whistleblower protection¹⁰
• Planned Parenthood’s former VP of medical affairs¹¹
• Various other detransitioners, whistleblowers, and former high-level executives

By our estimate, Planned Parenthood provides more abortion and sex-change services than all the following categories in their 2022- 2023 report, combined: primary care, STD treatments, UTI treatments, pap tests, HPV vaccines, other cervical cancer screening and prevention, mammograms, miscarriage care, prenatal services, adoption referrals, and sterilizations.¹² Other services – such as pregnancy testing, contraceptive services, HIV and STD testing, and breast exams – are all significantly down compared to recent years, some by as much as 72 percent.¹³ Total health services and patients are also down.

And yet, under Republican and Democrat administrations, Planned Parenthood has received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars every single year. In their 2023-2024 report¹⁴, Planned Parenthood reported receiving more than $792 million in taxpayer dollars, up from the year prior.¹⁵ Taxpayer funding overall is up 62 percent since 2010.¹⁶

The following report details the full scope of Planned Parenthood’s involvement in the lucrative sex-change business, as well as the ways they create a pipeline to that business through their numerous sex education programs nationwide, and their strategy for protecting this business through political activism.

As The Free Press reports, “in less than a decade, Planned Parenthood has “become the country’s leading provider of gender transition hormones for young adults, according to insurance claim data.”¹⁷ Planned Parenthood’s website proudly states that it provides puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery referrals, among other “services,” to patients who identify as transgender, and that “most” of its clinics offer “gender affirming care.”¹⁸

In its 2014-2015 annual report, Planned Parenthood reported that 26 of its centers were offering hormone treatments.¹⁹ Now, according to our count, as well as indications from the Planned Parenthood website²⁰, more Planned Parenthood clinics offer sex change procedures than offer abortions²¹.

As of April 2025, by our estimates, around 80 percent of Planned Parenthood clinics offer some form of “Gender Affirming Care,” while around 70 percent are advertised as offering abortions. Before the claim drew scrutiny from lawmakers²², Planned Parenthood regularly²³ bragged that it was the second-largest provider of cross-sex hormones in the country.²⁴

Planned Parenthood’s provision of sexchange services has grown dramatically over the years. According to an internal slide presentation²⁵ reported on by The Free Press, between 2016 and 2021 the number of health centers offering “transgender and nonbinary hormone care” increased by more than 450 percent.²⁶ Between 2019 and 2021, the number of patients for these services more than doubled.

Since then, their business has continued to explode. Between 2021 and 2022²⁷, for example, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio reported a 544% increase in “gender-affirming care” visits.²⁸ Between then and their most recent report, the number tripled again.²⁹

Insurance claim data provided to The Free Press by The Manhattan Institute, which does not include those who pay out-of-pocket, suggests “that 1 in 6 U.S. teens and young adults who sought gender hormones last year were seen at Planned Parenthood.³⁰ Between 2017 and 2023, affiliated clinics filed gender-related insurance claims for 12,000 youths aged 12–17.” The number of patients overall receiving sex-change procedures from Planned Parenthood in the insurance data “has risen tenfold since 2017. The largest proportion, about 40 percent, were 18- to 22-year-olds.” One former Planned Parenthood employee recalls her clinic receiving 1-2 new teenage girls seeking testosterone every single day. None were turned down.³¹

Insurance data probably understate the situation. Many affiliates report that about 20% or more of their clients pay out of pocket or are uninsured³², and insurance coverage of sex-change procedures, especially for minors, varies across the country. According to a 2024 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation³³, only about a quarter of large employers (200+ workers) and only half of very large employers (5,000+ workers³⁴ ) stated that their plans covered hormone therapy. Coverage of sex-change procedures under Medicaid or ACA plans varies dramatically. According to Planned Parenthood, many patients pay out of pocket because they “do not wish their primary insurance holder to know about their care for privacy or safety reasons.”³⁵

Luckily, many affiliates report the total numbers themselves. By our tally of affiliates’ 2023 reports, we estimate that Planned Parenthood was providing transgender services at a rate of at least 100,000 visits per year.³⁶ Updating the numbers to reflect the affiliates who have released 2024 reports, that low-end estimate is now potentially above 120,000 per year.

Year-over-year increases are huge. All affiliates we could find that consistently reported data – except one – showed an increase in transgender visits between their 2023 and 2024 reports. Hormone visits at these other affiliates increased in aggregate by 17 percent.

The exception to the rule was Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida. According to the affiliate’s report, they saw an 88 percent decrease due to supposedly onerous restrictions Florida had just recently passed.³⁷ What were these restrictions? Cross-sex hormones were limited to adults, patients had to visit in-person and sign consent forms acknowledging potential side effects, and the drugs had to be prescribed by doctors.

These may seem like simple requirements, but they are too much for Planned Parenthood. As we will outline below, Planned Parenthood regularly provides sex-change assistance to minors, regularly fails to inform its patients about potential side effects, regularly prescribes hormone treatments over the internet, often provides no mental health screening, and only involves actual medical doctors to a minimal degree.

“UNDER 30 MINUTES”

Affiliates brag that “[i]n most cases your clinician will be able to prescribe hormones the same day as your first visit. No letter from a mental health provider is required.”³⁸ Reports from whistleblowers and detransitioners generally describe initial visits for cross-sex hormones as taking around half an hour or less.

• Washington Free Beacon: “At least two high-profile detransitioners, Cat Cattinson and Helena Kirschner, received testosterone from Planned Parenthood after a 30-minute appointment, which, in Cattinson’s case, took place over the phone. Kirschner stopped taking testosterone once her mental health de-teriorated; Cattinson, a singer, stopped after it permanently destroyed her singing voice.”³⁹
• Cristina Hineman, The Free Press reports, was prescribed testosterone gel after her first visit.⁴⁰ “She remembers all this taking under 30 minutes.” She has since detransitioned. Another detransitioner, Anna, reports a similar experience. “[S]he wants Planned Parenthood to stop treating patients ‘like they’re on a conveyor belt.’”⁴¹
• Washington Free Beacon: “Fred arrived at his local clinic [...] at around 11:00 a.m., according to phone tracking data his parents used to monitor his whereabouts. By 11:39, they received a text message from CVS: Fred’s estrogen prescription was on its way. Instead of a months-long evaluation by expert psychiatrists, a nurse practitioner had, in little over 30 minutes, prescribed their special-needs son a powerful drug without their knowledge or consent.”⁴²

“NO DOCTORS”

It is not uncommon for cross-sex hormones to be administered by non-doctors. Prior to Florida’s law, one source noted, around 80 percent of patients receiving “gender affirming care” in the state were receiving it from nurses and physician assistants.⁴³

Planned Parenthood is no exception. One detransitioner reported that she was prescribed an alarmingly high dose of testosterone at Planned Parenthood after brief interactions with a nurse practitioner and a social worker, who waived their usual requirement that blood work be done because she seemed “so sure,” despite her having just turned 18.⁴⁴

Another whistleblower, whose previous employment with Planned Parenthood was confirmed by Abigail Shrier, claimed a similar pattern:

There were no doctors at the clinic where she worked. Nurse practitioners were the professionals with the highest medical training, she said. The clinic employed a gender counselor who had “no actual professional credentials or formal training other than being MtF” (that is, a male-to-female trans-gender person). Adolescents would come and speak to this gender counselor and Planned Parenthood would then forward the counselor’s “notes to an actual licensed mental health professional somewhere offsite, and rubber stamp approve the patients to begin their transition. This is basically how they circumvented the requirement to speak to an actual counselor,” according to the employee’s Twitter post. Whether patients received specific treatments—a course of testosterone, say—was decided by the “clinic manager,” with “no prior medical experience” whose prior job was “managing a Wendy’s,” the employee wrote.⁴⁵

At some affiliates, Planned Parenthood employees seem barely involved – they direct patients to take blood pressure readings themselves prior to an initial online meeting⁴⁶, meet for an initial visit online⁴⁷ (with a “clinician” involved at some point⁴⁸ ), send patients to a LabCorp location if any lab work needs to be done⁴⁹, and then prescribe.⁵⁰ Even scheduling followup appointments is the patient’s responsibility. One affiliate reports the majority of their gender visits now occur over the Internet.⁵¹

According to the former employee: “‘The extent of our intervention’ was to grant ‘their requests to start the hormone therapy.’”⁵²

“GATEKEEPING IS NOT NECESSARY”

Planned Parenthood makes it incredibly easy to obtain sex-change services. Affiliates generally operate under an “informed consent” model, meaning that patients do not need any psychological screening or letter of reference from a doctor before prescribing hormones.

Planned Parenthood defends this model. As the associate medical director of one affiliate told The Free Press: “Gatekeeping is not necessary. People are the experts of their own body and of their own journey, and as long as they can make decisions, they should be the agent of their own healthcare.”⁵³

If patients show up, it seems that the common practice is to just assume a hormone prescription is necessary. According to the whistleblow-er interviewed by Shrier, “The questions that we asked were like, very closed ended…It would be, ‘you know, at what age did this start’? Boom that is it. ‘What kinds of dysphoria do you feel’? Boom that’s it, you know? ‘What do you want out of your transition’? ‘Do you want top surgery?’ ‘Do you want bottom surgery’?”⁵⁴

While she said that patients were technically given a document outlining some potential side effects, “I can say anecdotally that I never saw anybody read it.” Of the document, detransitioner Helena Kirschner recalls: “I gave it a glance, knowing that I had already made my decision and some silly formality wouldn’t stop me. I and the professionals already knew what was best for me. I signed the document.”⁵⁵

Not that the document would have provided much information anyway. Planned Parenthood doesn’t want to do anything that might deter patients from taking the hormones, and the list of side effects they mention is pretty bare-bones.

According to The Free Press⁵⁶, while “Planned Parenthood’s materials for clinicians state atrophy [of the reproductive tract] can begin within just 3–6 months of exposure [to testosterone]” the three-page consent form only refers to this as genital “dryness.”⁵⁷

As Dr. Laura Edwards-Leeper, the co-founder of the first pediatric gender clinic in the United States, told the Washington Free Beacon, “That’s crazy. [...] Vaginal atrophy should always be discussed. If they’re not including that on their list, that’s a problem.”⁵⁸

The associate medical director interviewed by The Free Press “acknowledged that some [side effects] may go unmentioned,” but described this as a moral benefit, “saying it would be wrong to point patients to things that might happen 10 or 20 years down the road when ‘they’re having lifesaving care right now.’”⁵⁹

“SOMETHING THAT THEY ARE NOT EQUIPPED TO HANDLE”

Many supporters of Planned Parenthood’s overall agenda, and of sex-change procedures in general, find Planned Parenthood’s practices in this area alarming.

Shrier’s whistleblower made clear that she supported what she believes to be Planned Parenthood’s core mission, including abortion, but said that “their recent roles in trans activism are abhorrent, and they’re digging their own grave.”⁶⁰

And The Free Press reports speaking with “a former Planned Parenthood clinic employee who, trans-identified himself, has been taking testosterone for nearly a decade and knows its effects intimately. He became concerned that the information wasn’t being shared with new patients, and asked the chief medical officer why. He was told that protocols were set by the national office, and in any case, informing patients of lesser-known side effects ‘would scare them.’ He has since obtained legal whistleblower protection.”⁶¹

Dr. Edwards-Leeper’s opinion of Planned Parenthood’s sex-change practice is dim overall:

“I have always been a very strong supporter of Planned Parenthood and am pro-choice. [...] But they have taken on something that they are not equipped to handle.”⁶²

Erica Anderson, former president of the US Professional Association for Transgender Health, the US affiliate of the professional organization that sets clinical standards for transgender procedures, holds a similar view. Anderson states that Planned Parenthood clinicians lacked sufficient training to adequately assess a patient’s “developmental trajectory.” From the Washington Free Beacon:

“I’ve had patients desperate to get hormones where I’ve been the voice of caution,” said Anderson, who is transgender herself. “In some cases, they say, ‘I’ll just go to Planned Parenthood when I’m 18.’ Usually I can dissuade them but sometimes I can’t.”⁶³

Even Dr. Vanessa Cullins, “Planned Parenthood’s VP of Medical Affairs when it wrote transgender services into the national guidelines, allowing the program to expand nationally,” expressed concern to The Free Press about these practices and guidelines. “We have to be vigilant when we’re giving powerful medication to young people, and these are powerful medications. [...] [If someone is not fully informed,] it could be a nightmare. [...] I would suggest that 30 minutes is not enough.”⁶⁴ According to Dr. Cullins, her previous guidelines envisioned that these treatments would only be for adults, and would involve extensive coordination with outside mental health professionals and primary care doctors.

The Shrier whistleblower reported that many of the teenagers her clinic saw had anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder.⁶⁵ Many had “selfharm scars” and “fresh self-harm marks,” which employees were not supposed to address. “A lot of them have serious emotional issues, a lot of them had a history of abuse and baggage.”⁶⁶

The Washington Free Beacon reports on one young man on the autism spectrum, who struggled with depression and anxiety, and “was expelled from three different special-needs schools due to behavioral problems[.]”⁶⁷ His parents intended to take him to a gender clinic they hoped could provide a more rigorous and in-depth mental assessment and screening. But when he became frustrated with how long this would take, the high school student simply went to a Planned Parenthood instead, which prescribed him estrogen within a little over half an hour.

Erica Anderson describes this dynamic as having an effect on the transgender industry as a whole. Afraid of losing patients to Planned Parenthood, the Washington Free Beacon paraphrases, there is a general “race to the bottom that pulls all providers, no matter their philosophy, toward the informed consent model adopted by Planned Parenthood, which doles out life-altering drugs to almost anyone who requests them.”

The whistleblower who spoke to Shrier said that she never saw a single girl seeking testosterone turned down or referred for psychiatric evaluation.⁶⁸ “One of the boys who did confess that he smoked so much weed that he was doubling up on his estrogen… We did end up ceasing his therapy until he saw—I think it was like a substance abuse counselor or something like that. But other than that, we never turned away anybody.”

Though many young people who identify as transgender eventually de-transition, Planned Parenthood does not seem equipped to handle this, as shown by the experience of Cristina Hineman:

The last time she went to Planned Parenthood in March of 2023, Hineman, then 19, held back tears as she told the nurse practitioner she had come to realize, with horror that still grips her, that it all had been a mistake. The consent form Hineman had signed stated, “You can choose to stop taking testosterone at any time. If you decide to do that, talk to your doctor or nurse.” But Hineman discovered there was no protocol for stopping, no handout. Her clinician had no advice except to contact a gender therapist. Hineman left a voicemail but said she never got a return call.⁶⁹

Hineman is now suing, which is why her story has become public. Many others’ stories may never be known. According to The New York Times, “Planned Parenthood routinely requires patients who receive settlements to sign nondisclosure agreements.”⁷⁰

“WHENEVER AND HOWEVER WE CAN UNDER THE LAW”

These practices are disturbing in general, but especially so when minors are involved.

It is not always easy to determine which affiliates cover which procedures for minors, and policies vary across the country. Some affiliates have provided cross-sex hormones to patients as young as 14, while others nominally limit their procedures to 16 years and to emancipated minors or those with parental consent.⁷¹ Some state that they are only able to treat adults, sometimes due to local laws and regulations. Many clinics declare⁷², more vaguely, that Planned Parenthood will “provide gender-affirming care whenever and however we can under the law.”⁷³

Several affiliates and clinics, as well as Planned Parenthood’s national website⁷⁴, state openly that they prescribe puberty blockers for transgender-identifying children.⁷⁵ According to their national education materials⁷⁶, Planned Parenthood views puberty blockers as an advisable course of action for “transgender or nonbinary” children who are finding puberty “uncomfortable, scary, or stressful[.]”⁷⁷ In a video pitched to minors, Planned Parenthood explains: “There are medicines you can take to delay puberty for a while. They’re called puberty blockers, and they work like a stop sign, by holding hormones testosterone and estrogen that cause puberty changes, like facial hair growth and periods.”⁷⁸ As they state earlier in the video: “Your gender identity is real. You should be the one to decide what changes you want to make to your body.”

Even when children are too young to receive the procedures at Planned Parenthood, affiliates are often quick to assure them that they will connect them with other providers or resources elsewhere.⁷⁹ One Pennsylvania affiliate laments that “[a]t this time, we can only see patients who are 18+ years or older” but adds that “[i]f you or someone you know is under 18 and is interested in learning more about hormone therapy, you can contact our Patient Navigators at [PHONE NUM- BER]. They can help find resources.”⁸⁰

Many clinics provide surgery referrals, though it’s unclear what the process looks like or what safeguards, if any, are in place. One member of Planned Parenthood’s “national medical committee,” The Free Press reports, has stated that transgender teenagers can consent to breast removal: “If you want breasts at a later point in your life, you can go and get them.”⁸¹

Some affiliates note that other “gender-affirming” interventions may still be available from Planned Parenthood if hormones are not⁸², even without parental consent: “People 15 and younger who have periods can come to us for birth control options to stop periods,” Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s “Gender Affirming Care Patient Guide” states. “Parent/guardian consent is not required to get birth control.” And according to Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest, Inc., “While patients under 18 cannot receive hormone therapy, they may have a consultation with a provider to understand treatment options and to receive medications to stop their periods (if desired).” Using contraception as a “gender-affirming” treatment is a massive loophole: most states allow minors to consent to these contraceptives on their own⁸³, and many states allow minors to do so without even notifying parents.⁸⁴

All in all, according to The Free Press, Planned Parenthood clinics filed “gender-related insurance” claims for 12,000 children between 2017 and 2023.⁸⁵ This is likely an undercount. One study from 2019 on health insurance coverage of “gender-affirming health care services” for children found that nearly 70 percent of insurance plans they reviewed did not cover puberty-blocking medication, and more than 80 percent did not cover cross-sex hormones.⁸⁶

Because of the ubiquity of telehealth services, patients may be able to access services from more permissive affiliates, even if their local clinic will not see them. Some clinics expressly limit telehealth to patients currently within their state, but this is not universal. And there are indications that some affiliates may be providing telehealth across state lines. In 2023, Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi reported that their “gender affirming healthcare” program – 1,086 in-person visits and 918 telehealth – served 167 zip codes “across Tennessee and 5 neighboring states.”⁸⁷ Many states have laws protecting providers of cross-sex hormones from out-ofstate investigations or lawsuits categorically.⁸⁸

In Missouri, Planned Parenthood is under investigation by Attorney General Andrew Bailey as part of an inquiry into “how this clandestine network of clinics has subjected children to puberty blockers and irreversible surgery, often without parental consent.”⁸⁹ Planned Parenthood is separately under investigation⁹⁰ in the state after videos emerged in which “Planned Parenthood staff admitted they traffic minors across state lines to perform abortions without parental consent.”⁹¹

“[W]hatever your genitals are, that doesn’t mean that’s how you identify in your brain, and that’s chill.”Planned Parenthood educational material on the “Gender Unicorn”

Planned Parenthood bills itself as “the single largest provider of sex education in the United States,” with a focus on advancing “equity” (including for the “Latinx” community) and being “LGBTQ-inclusive.”⁹² Many affiliates partner with local schools, foster care systems, criminal justice facilities, and libraries to spread their “educational materials.” According to a report from The Claremont Institute, “Planned Parenthood and its allies won 80 percent of all sex education grant money between 2020 and 2023. [...] Planned Parenthood and its affiliates write the standards and create, deliver, or endorse the majority of curricula used by federal grantees.”⁹³

They want this “education” to start extremely young. According to a recent “Call to Action” from Planned Parenthood and other groups: “Comprehensive sex education delivered in schools from kindergarten through 12th grade is the best way to provide truly LGBTQ-inclusive sex education and ensure positive sexual health outcomes for all youth.”⁹⁴ After all, as another Planned Parenthood guide declares, “sexuality is a part of life through all the ages and stages. Babies, elders, and everyone in between can experience sexuality.”⁹⁵ And “[m]any people,” the national website proclaims, “know their gender identity as young as age 2[.]”⁹⁶

They follow their own advice. Planned Parenthood’s national site provides resources for teaching transgenderism to pre-schoolers.⁹⁷ A curated playlist of videos from Planned Parenthood Arizona⁹⁸, Inc., includes an animated video for preschoolers about gender identity – “Sex is what you are labeled when you are born [...] Your gender identity is about how you feel on the inside – like a boy, girl, both, or neither.”⁹⁹ In the video – complete with its own song – animated penguin “Charles” becomes “Charlotte,” “Darla” becomes “Darren,” and “Skyler” becomes “gender-fluid.” After each of these transitions, the penguins post pictures of themselves on a fake version of Instagram and rack up hundreds of likes.

Another video series endorsed by the affiliate, this one for 9-12 year olds, features drag queens, lessons on gender and sexual orientation, tours of the “Cabbagetown” abortion clinic, “a rousing game of Scrotum Ball,” and various “gender-flexible dolls.”¹⁰⁰

Gender, according to Planned Parenthood, can be very flexible. Their social media declares that it’s “totally normal and OK” to feel like you are “more than one gender at the same time,” “different genders in different situations,” “different genders at different times,” “bigender (2 genders), trigender (3 genders), poly gender (many genders), and pangender (all genders)” – or even to change gender identity “day-to-day.”¹⁰¹

Another affiliate released an Activity Book as part of their sex ed programming, including a gender-identity word match, coloring pages depicting genitalia, a section on “The Gender Unicorn,” and an exercise filling in “flower petals” to help understand one’s intersectional “social identities [...] such as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, ability, first language, and religion.” Quizzes help teach readers that “condoms come in a variety of colors, flavors, and textures to increase pleasure while still keeping users safe.”¹⁰²

Yet another affiliate released a coloring book about sex toys, masturbation, and sexting. “Discover Pleasure,” one coloring page urges.¹⁰³

When details emerge about the content of Planned Parenthood’s youth programs, they are shocking. Until earlier this year, Planned Parenthood helped run and promote the national website Q Chat Space, an online chat room for minors and young adults to discuss, The Daily Wire reports, “everything from tarot cards to ‘queer youth activism’ to ‘sex and relationships,’ all without parental permission” or even parental knowledge.¹⁰⁴ Various schools throughout the country promoted these chat rooms for students. Several state Departments of Education promoted them on their websites.

Now, Planned Parenthood hosts a 24/7 “private,” “non-judgmental” chatbot designed for children as young as 13, called Roo.¹⁰⁵

Local affiliates have similar programs for children in their area or online. Take one example, from a Planned Parenthood affiliate in Pennsylvania, which provides several “free, confidential, and empowering” LGBTQ+ programs for local children and young adults (often combined – one group is for 10-14 year olds, one for 12-21 year olds, and another for 14-21 year olds).¹⁰⁶

According to the Daily Caller, these groups – funded in part by government grants – have hosted drag queen performances, celebrations of queer sex and masturbation¹⁰⁷, and talks from hospital representatives to discuss the pediatric sex-change process. They hosted “Queer Prom” for children as young as 13, featuring drag queens and handouts of condoms, lubricant, and tarot cards.

Their “Rainbow Room Junior,” or “Roy G. Biv” program provides “medically accurate, social and racial justice inclusive sexuality education” for 10- 14 year olds, since “there is no set age for recognizing one’s sexual orientation or gender identity.”

The Daily Caller continues:

[A]ctivities of the Roy G. Biv program have included teaching kids how to express themselves through “gender affirming” clothing, learning about queer sexual identities and holding a “binder drive” to help provide children with chest binders – a garment that compresses a woman’s breasts to make her appear masculine. The group also held a fundraiser to raise money to purchase binders and tucking underwear for “trans youth.” Tucking underwear is a garment worn by gender confused individuals that “tucks” a man’s penis and testicles into a pocket, minimizing its appearance.

The same affiliate, the Daily Caller reports, also ran “an after school LGBTQ+ program where students and young adults, ages 14 to 21, paint naked ‘transgender’ bodies, participate in Condom Olympics, and play queer jeopardy — all with full approval from the school board.”¹⁰⁸

This affiliate additionally hosts a summer camp for 10-14 year olds as an “inclusive and affirming space for gender expansive youth.”

Other affiliates have similar camps – Planned Parenthood of Delaware’s version this summer is meant to provide sex ed and instruction on “LGBTQ+ Identities” for 11-14 year olds of “all genders.”¹⁰⁹ In Minnesota, Planned Parenthood offered other sex ed camps for children as young as 13, including one for 15-18 year olds that promised “those who complete the program receive a $150 gift card!”¹¹⁰

Other news reports abound:

A Planned Parenthood affiliate in California partnered with local libraries to provide condoms, lube, and graphic sex ed materials for free to patrons of all ages, “including children without restrictions.”¹¹¹

An elementary school in Washington state reportedly provided students with Planned Parenthood sex ed materials including “pubic hair art” “shaved to appear heart-shaped and to resemble a cartoonish looking cat,”¹¹² “startling diagrams of uniquely shaped genitalia,” lessons on “identities” such as “transgender, intersex, drag king, trans femme, agender person, girlish boy, boi grrl and nonbinary person,” and introductions to pronouns such as “they,” “ze” and “tree.”¹¹³ The lesson also listed various “supplies that could be helpful during puberty,” including puberty blockers, helpfully labelled with its specific brand name and described as a “small, flexible implant.” “[Y]ou get to choose what works for you!”¹¹⁴

One Planned Parenthood “sex educator” on TikTok reportedly advised minors on how to get “spicy toys” without their parents’ knowledge over the Internet, or otherwise substitute with vegetables.¹¹⁵

• One Planned Parenthood video directed at teenagers encourages them to “make sure that any toys you put up your anus have a flared base.”¹¹⁶
• One affiliate offers a four¹¹⁷ part¹¹⁸ video¹¹⁹ series¹²⁰ about the “Gender Unicorn,” telling children that gender identity is “who you feel you are,” “not what your genitals tell you you are,” describing biological sex as something “forcefully assigned you.”¹²¹ “[W]hatever your genitals are, that doesn’t mean that’s how you identify in your brain, and that’s chill.”
• An undercover investigation from Live Action discovered Planned Parenthood employees advising young teens with sex advice in extremely graphic terms – regaling them about their own experiences with bondage, advising them to visit pornography websites to get ideas for “kinky” sex, and suggesting they get an older friend to buy them whips and handcuffs.¹²²

Some of Planned Parenthood’s curricula are developed using federal dollars¹²³, such as “Get Real,” which received $1 million in annual funding under HHS’ Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.¹²⁴ “Get Real” is shocking – according to the Massachusetts Family Institute, it teaches children as young as 11 “how to enthusiastically consent to sexual activity, promotes solo and mutual masturbation, directs teachers to lead children through inappropriate sexual role-playing scenarios, and more.”¹²⁵ As the Daily Caller reports, Get Real “encouraged sixth graders to prepare for sex by including material on proper condom usage for vaginal, oral or anal sex and recommending other non-traditional contraception methods, like non-microwavable saran wrap.”¹²⁶

Sixth graders are asked to identify where people “their age” can get condoms.¹²⁷ Get Real introduces seventh graders to transgenderism¹²⁸ and is completely suffused with gender ideology by 9th-10th grade¹²⁹ – students are directed to identify whether various parts of the reproductive system (including, bizarrely, the anus) are part of the system of a “person with a penis and related parts” or a “person with a vagina and related parts” or both.¹³⁰

In one lesson, students are meant to learn all of the following terms: “sexual identity, sex assigned at birth, intersex, gender identity, gender expression, transgender, cisgender, masculine, feminine, androgynous, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, sexual orientation, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, LGBTQ+, questioning, queer, ally, misgendering, [and] heteronormative.”¹³¹

As Scott Yenor and Anna K. Miller summarized in their report: “Planned Parenthood’s influence in America’s K-12 schools is pervasive and growing, all unwittingly supported by taxpayers. In a word, we are funding porn in our libraries, the ‘transing’ of kids, sophisticated grooming, and gay clubs on campus.”¹³²

“Is [Planned Parenthood] a political organization or a health organization first?”The New York Times, describing one of Planned Parenthood’s “central tensions”¹³³

Each election cycle, Planned Parenthood proudly announces plans to spend tens of millions of dollars defeating Republican politicians and policies – $20 million in 2016¹³⁴, $24.5 million in 2017-2018¹³⁵, $45 million in 2020¹³⁶, $50 million in 2022¹³⁷, and $40 million in 2024.¹³⁸

Planned Parenthood’s intense involvement has led some to wonder what exactly the main purpose of the organization is. As The New York Times put it, one of the “central tensions” of Planned Parenthood, and the source of “internal turmoil” in recent years, has been the question of whether it is “a political organization or a health organization first[.]” It’s hard to imagine the same question even being asked of any other serious health network, let alone being so difficult to answer.¹³⁹

Planned Parenthood’s national rules seem to suggest that politics, not healthcare, is the main priority. Again, according to The New York Times, while Planned Parenthood has raked in as much as $498 million in annual donations recently, “little” of that money actually goes towards providing health care at actual clinics. “Instead, under the national bylaws, the majority of the money is spent on the legal and political fight to maintain abortion rights.”¹⁴⁰

The types of medical services Planned Parenthood prioritizes are highly politicized. Regular run-of-the-mill care is de-emphasized, while woke priorities like abortion and sex-change procedures have become a larger and larger focus.

When choices have to be made between politics and health care, legitimate medical services are often the first to go. As The New York Times reported, “Planned Parenthood of Northern California made a hard funding choice last March when it ended a prenatal care program that served 200 to 250 low-income women a month.”¹⁴¹ That same fiscal year, the affiliate reported more than 17,000 “gender-affirming hormone therapy” visits¹⁴², up 12 percent compared to two years prior.¹⁴³ Other affiliates note that while they will happily provide cross-sex hormones to those with gender dysphoria, they are not equipped to provide samesex hormones such as “menopause care.”¹⁴⁴

These priorities make a certain amount of financial sense. Sex-change procedures are especially good for Planned Parenthood’s business. As one whistleblower notes, while abortions were her clinic’s “bread and butter,” “trans identifying kids are cash cows, and they are kept on the hook for the foreseeable future in terms of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, meetings, etc., whereas abortions are (hopefully) a one-and-done situation.”¹⁴⁵

This logic has led sex-changes and abortions to become an outsized part of Planned Parenthood’s medical activities. Judging by our estimates and Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s 2023-2024 report, it would appear that abortions (402,230) and sex-change visits (100,000+) are a larger part of Planned Parenthood’s business than all the following categories in the 2023 report combined¹⁴⁶ :

• Primary care and family practice services¹⁴⁷
• STD treatment¹⁴⁸
• UTI treatment¹⁴⁹
• Prevention, screening, treatment, and diagnosis of cervical cancer (including HPV vaccinations and pap tests)¹⁵⁰
• Mammograms¹⁵¹
• Pre-natal care and non-abortion pregnancy resolution services (e.g. miscarriage care and adoption referrals)¹⁵²
• Sterilizations¹⁵³

The vast majority of Planned Parenthood’s remaining “services”¹⁵⁴ are low-complexity, quick interventions that are readily and cheaply available at thousands of other health clinics, doctors’ offices, pregnancy centers, pharmacies, and elsewhere – for example, condoms and other contraception, contraceptive “counseling,” Plan B, non-mammogram breast exams, pregnancy tests, and STD or HIV tests.

Planned Parenthood’s “services” are low-complexity by design. Planned Parenthood directs its employees to try to see at least four patients per hour, and to keep appointments to about 10 minutes long.¹⁵⁵

Many of these services require nothing more medically intensive than a blood draw. But even here, Planned Parenthood cuts corners. According to The New York Times, blood draws at Planned Parenthood are regularly done by medical assistants “who are not required to have medical training,” draw blood from patients after “an hour or so” of training, and who often run into problems they are not equipped to handle.¹⁵⁶

These services, even such as they are, have become a smaller and smaller portion of Planned Parenthood’s business over the years. Since 2010, breast exams at Planned Parenthood are down 74 percent, pap tests are down 77 percent, and contraceptive services are down nearly 40 percent.¹⁵⁷

Looking further, emergency contraception kits are down 64 percent since 2009¹⁵⁸, and pregnancy testing is down nearly 20 percent from its recent peak in the 2014-2015 report.¹⁵⁹ STI and HIV tests are down more than 5 percent compared to the 2019-2020 report.¹⁶⁰ Reproductive “Preventive Care Visits” – which seem to have been labelled “Well-Woman Exams” before Planned Parenthood started excising the word “woman” from its reports – were down 31 percent relative to two years ago, to a little less than 130,000.¹⁶¹ Sex-change visits may outnumber this category in the very near future, if they don’t already.

This shift in focus towards political activism is intentional. When Planned Parenthood’s previous president, Dr. Leana Wen (the first doctor to run the organization in nearly half a century), tried to re-emphasize health care as opposed to political activism, she was unceremoniously terminated by the board after just 8 months.¹⁶² She was quickly replaced by a political science professor and activist whose previous experience included designing mandatory unconscious-bias training for Starbucks employees.¹⁶³

Among Dr. Wen’s crimes, according to The New York Times, was that she “directed her staff to add new pages to the Planned Parenthood website about topics like asthma and the common cold – conditions that its clinics do not typically treat.”¹⁶⁴ Planned Parenthood’s leadership was likewise “resistant to Dr. Wen’s vision for providing additional services such as mental health and substance abuse resources, seeing this type of treatment as ‘mission creep.’”

Reports from the time indicate that another reason for Dr. Wen’s departure was her insufficient radicalism on gender ideology: “Two sources told BuzzFeed News that Wen also refused to use ‘trans-inclusive’ language, for example saying ‘people’ instead of ‘women’ and telling staff that she believed talking about transgender issues would ‘isolate people in the Midwest.’”¹⁶⁵

As a former high-level executive told The Free Press, “There was this huge push to cancel the word woman.¹⁶⁶ Women’s health or female were edited out constantly to reflect gender-neutral language.” The reporter continues: “For example, people with uteruses began appearing. Chestfeeding became a synonym for breastfeeding. And front hole as a word for vagina was added to the glossary.”

Planned Parenthood’s commitment to gender ideology led to various other absurdities. One Planned Parenthood medical director testified before the House Oversight committee that “men can have pregnancies, especially trans men.”¹⁶⁷ This kind of incoherent message was echoed on Planned Parenthood’s social media pages, which declared that “Women aren’t the only ones who have abortions,” and, confusingly, “Abortion Is Gender Affirming Care.”¹⁶⁸

According to the executive, after Trump’s election in 2016, “Planned Parenthood became the place to work if you wanted to be on the front lines of the anti-Trump resistance.”¹⁶⁹ New staffers “believed in every so-called progressive issue, and at that time the forefront was gender-affirming care. That one issue became everything.”

Other progressive issues infuse various affiliates. Until the Trump administration pulled Title X funding to DEI organizations potentially violating civil rights law, it was not uncommon for affiliates to host land acknowledgements¹⁷⁰, issue statements supporting defunding the police¹⁷¹, or extensive¹⁷² screeds¹⁷³ highlighting their commitment to DEI, equity over equality, and ending the “white supremacy and systemic racism” that “permeate every American institution[.]”¹⁷⁴

The quality of medical care is a serious problem. The New York Times recently issued a report describing a number of disturbing examples and allegations over the past few years, including¹⁷⁵ :

• One affiliate failing to upload STD test results into charts, leading patients to “wrongly believe[] that their results were negative when they did not hear back.”
• A Nebraska “clinician” who inserted an IUD without realizing the patient was four months pregnant. “Several hours later, the patient was rushed to an emergency room and gave birth to a stillborn fetus.”
• “In a case settled in California last year, a woman accused the organization of improperly implanting a birth control device in her arm and causing nerve damage.”
• One clinic where “sewage from a backed-up toilet seeped into the abortion recovery room for two days,” causing patients to vomit from the stench.
• Widespread problems with clinics running out of “over-the-counter pain medication and I.V. flushes.”
• Salaries “so low that it is not unusual for staff members to qualify for Medicaid and federal food assistance.”
• A botched IUD procedure, leading to months of pain and bleeding, with the clinic failing to respond over the phone and continuing to bill the family, “even though they had paid their balance[.]”

The Attorney General of Missouri further highlights one local facility that was forced to close after staff “admitted to having used moldy abortion equipment on women for months.”¹⁷⁶

It isn’t exactly clear why care at Planned Parenthood would be so shoddy. Planned Parenthood reported receiving more than $790 million in taxpayer dollars in their 2023-2024 report, and more than $2 billion in total revenue (or a little less than $1,000 per patient).¹⁷⁷