In an age of privatization and governance by contracting, collaborations have become vital to produce government services and attain desired outcomes. However, it is often difficult to get actors to agree on a core mission statement and key strategies to achieve it. This problem is best illustrated by the countless organizations breaking ties with an increasing radical Planned Parenthood and, in some cases, Planned Parenthood breaking with moderate counterparts.
Collaborations are formed to bring together different resources and expertise to achieve a specific goal. However, this diversity also leads to “organization aims” which differ from “collaboration aims.” Goals are usually quite broad, for example, “women’s healthcare.” The “aims” are the strategies and actions for achieving that goal. Conflict arises here about how to best achieve the goal. For example, does a “women’s health” collaboration aim to focus more on fostering motherhood (pre and post-natal care), providing mammograms and focusing on illnesses more often found in women, or providing choices to women to terminate a pregnancy. Organizations within collaborations often have different expectations and want to see different outputs. To further this example, Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms or post-natal services. If these are not in line with local governments, local funding and use of Planned Parenthood might be cut because of these differing aims. Of course, when dealing with Planned Parenthood one cannot help but address the abortion debate. Since abortion services are not packaged, for example they count connected pre-abortion services such as ultrasound and medication as non-abortion treatment despite the end goal and intent which skews statistical data, it is hard to say exactly how much Planned Parenthood makes off abortions - but it is estimated to be about 10-15% and others would claim much higher.
Shelby County in Tennessee was one of the more recent of a wave of local governments breaking from collaboration with Planned Parenthood. Shelby County had collaborated with Planned Parenthood for over 35 years to provide reproductive health services to women. The county switched to a new provider, Christ Community Health Services (CCHS), because they were more in tune with the communities needs. CCHS provided much needed post-natal care, mammograms, and did not provide abortion services that were contrary to the community’s pro-life and pro-motherhood beliefs. A similar situation happened when the Catholic Jesuit Seattle University severed ties with the Planned Parenthood under pressure from the Catholic Church and Catholics across the nation as well as various pro-life groups. The university collaborated with Planned Parenthood by recommending students for internships with them as well as referring students to them for women’s health services. Clearly, this partnership with an abortion provider went against Catholic teaching and the University quickly dropped this partnership.
In the same vein, Planned Parenthood has also severed ties with non-abortion providing affiliates, such as its partner in Corpus Christi, TX. Although one could surmise that the underlying reason is because of the money and political standing abortion generates, the official reason is that Planned Parenthood was aiming to “standardize its operations.” Clearly, differing aims in how to provide women’s health services led to this breakup.
Planned Parenthood has also been under investigation by Congress for questionable business practices which could also lead many collaborating with them to think twice. The group “Live Action” has posted dozens of undercover videos that show Planned Parenthood employees willing to bend the law to give abortions to underage teens without parental consent (or give them advice on where else to go), not report instances of rape and statutory rape to authorities as many states require, and aid in providing services to women enslaved by sex traffickers. Most recently, a Planned Parenthood in New Jersey was caught advising a couple posing as sex traffickers on how to secure secret abortions, STD testing, and contraception for their female underage sex slaves, and make their whole operation “look as legit as possible.” Last September, Congress launched an investigation into these allegations of hiding sex trafficking and not reporting rape as well as Medicaid fraud and other financial disparities. Clearly, a local government or private entity that aims to promote women’s health would be inclined to rethink their collaboration with an entity that supports statutory rape, aids sex trafficking, may defrauds the government.
Differing aims have led to Planned Parenthood losing many public and private sponsors. While Planned Parenthood’s lack of mammogram and post-natal care are a factor, the main reason for the breakups is regarding abortion services and the latest string of unnerving undercover videos. Abortion services are often seen as an aim that does not achieve women’s health, especially when one considers the emotional and psychological side effects such as Post-Abortion Syndrome and the potential link to increased breast cancer. Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, and Texas have mandated laws that warn abortion seekers about possible breast cancer links. Federal funding of Planned Parenthood has also led to debates in Washington and in the recent Republican debates.
New technologies have allowed us to see the unborn through every stage of development. The unborn are increasingly humanized and seen as the people that they are. As America shifts its aims toward a pro-life and pro-motherhood understanding, Planned Parenthood must adapt its aims and provide true women’s health services that glorify womanhood and ease the transition into motherhood or it will lose out in other collaborative opportunities and wind up in the trash bin of history. [I am inclined to hope for the latter].
