In the early days, the wealthy elite funded Planned Parenthood’s efforts to halt the “breeding” of the lower classes. Tax forms recently made available by foundations of some of the nation’s wealthiest families show that, rather than waning, that interest has grown, now helping to fund not only Planned Parenthood, but also a worldwide abortion empire.
According to its most recent annual report, budget figures for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2015, show that Planned Parenthood took in $353.5 million in “private contributions and bequests.” That on top of the $553.7 million PPFA gets from taxpayers, and the $309.2 million it receives from customers in “non-government health services revenue.”
Planned Parenthood tells us that these private contributions represent 518,000 active individual contributors. However this masks the fact that there are a handful of donors providing a huge portion of the group’s funding.
Warren Buffett’s foundation is by far the largest contributor–over $70 million in one year alone!
The Packard Foundation and Soros’ Open Society Institute
According to the their 2013 Form 990 PF, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, run by the heirs of one of the founders of printer manufacturer Hewlett Packard, gave the Planned Parenthood Federation of America $455,000 for “Population and Reproductive Health.”
Individual Planned Parenthood affiliates were recipients of the Packard Foundation’s largesse as well. Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, one of those featured prominently in recent videos on fetal parts sales from the Center for Medical Progress, received $250,000. The California Planned Parenthood Education Fund received $170,000, also for “Population and Reproductive Health.”
The International Planned Parenthood Federation, of which PPFA is a member, received $150,000 from the Packard Foundation for these purposes.
The Guttmacher Institute, an independent agency that was once a special research affiliate of Planned Parenthood, got $2,820,000 for “Population and Reproductive Health” from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and an additional $75,000 for “Organizational Effectiveness and Philanthropy.”
George Soros and his Open Society Institute (OPI) have also been major players. Soros’ group is supposed to have given around a million to support the promotion of RU486 after it received marketing approval from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in 2000 (Wall Street Journal, 11/14/00. (The Packard foundation loaned the distributor $10 million in 1998 to help make it available, according to the September 30, 2000, New York Times, and has continued supporting abortion and its leading U.S. performer. )
On the Open society Institute’s 2013 Form 990 PF, the most recent available, OPI gave PPFA $1,650,000 “to address health disparities in the south and southeast regions of the United States by building health centers and other infrastructure that is key to expanding access to critical reproductive health services” In case one needs reminding, a key issue in the “south and southeast regions of the United States” in 2013 was the passage of protective pro-life laws by the Texas legislature.
Buffett the Big Abortion Backer
When it comes to giving to Planned Parenthood and abortion related causes, no one holds a candle to Warren Buffett.
Through the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for the multi-billionaire investor’s late wife, Buffett has contributed millions to promote abortion here and around the world.
In its 2014 Form 990 PF, the Buffett Foundation gave a total of $40,620,507 to PPFA for “project support.” That’s $40.6 million, if you thought you missed a decimal point.
It gave an additional $13,472,258 to various Planned Parenthood affiliates across the United States.
That wasn’t all. International Planned Parenthood received $9,669,606 and the Guttmacher Institute received $3,709,208.
Planned Parenthood’s political action committee, committed to electing pro-abortion candidates, got a cool $7,250,000 from Buffett’s foundation.
That’s over $70 million to Planned Parenthood related entities in just one year’s time.
Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter. Follow @LifeNewsHQ
This was not a unique, one time occurrence. Form 990s from previous years show similar or even higher totals going to PPFA and related organizations ($48.6 million to PPFA alone in 2013).
Other national and international abortion backers were also the beneficiaries of Buffett’s “generosity.” IPAS, international sellers and promoters of manual vacuum aspiration (a large hand-operated vacuum syringe for abortions in areas without electricity) received $26,670,418.
Marie Stopes International (MSI) performs abortion in countries all over the world. The U.S. affiliate of MSI received $27,988,937 from Buffett to support its projects.
Others receiving large gifts from Buffett in 2014 include Population Services International ($45.4 million), the National Abortion Federation Hotline ($25.4 million), Catholics for Choice ($3 million), the Center for Reproductive Rights ($2.5 million), Population Council ($2.1 million), Gynuity (promoter of chemical abortions worldwide, $2 million) and abortion promoting newsblog, RH Reality Check (renamed “Rewire,”$2.6 million).
Smaller, but still substantial gifts went to the Feminist Majority ($300,326), Medical Students for Choice ($450,212), the National Abortion Federation ($500,399), NARAL Pro-Choice America ($751,636, though individual NARAL state foundations together received an additional million dollars), the Family Planning Association of Maine (which just this year added webcam abortion, $301,326), and Whole Woman’s Health (the clinic chain that brought the challenge to Texas’ HB2 abortion law, $891,159).
Somewhat suspicious gifts (all given for vague “project support”) went to the long time medical defenders of abortion, the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists ($359,033), the Board of Regents of the University of Texas (which launched the Texas Policy Evaluation Project in Austin in 2011 to develop data against abortion legislation, $2,024,449), and more than $13 million to the University of California – San Francisco, long established as America’s “abortion academy.”
New money, old patterns
The concern that drove corporate titans to invest in and promote groups like Planned Parenthood in the 1950s and 1960s does not seem to have abated. As recently as 2009, several of the richest and most powerful people in America got together, at Bill Gates’ request, to discuss solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems. Chief among them? Overpopulation (“Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation” London Sunday Times, 5/24/09).
Members of that group that met included David Rockefeller Jr., Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, and Oprah Winfrey.
Tax forms show that key members of this group have put their money where mouths are.
The Media Research Center (MRC) says that Buffett donated more than $1.2 billion to pro-abortion causes worldwide from 2001 to 2012, with Planned Parenthood the recipient of $289 million (www.mrc.org/articles/warren-buffett-billion-dollar-king-abortion).
MRC points out that years ago, Warren’s daughter Susie told the Chronicle of Philanthropy (11/13/97) that her father has always believed that population control was “the biggest and most important issue.” And Roger Lowenstein said in his 1995 biography that Buffet had “a Malthusian dread that overpopulation would aggravate problems in all other areas—such as food, housing, even human survival.”
Packard wrote a letter to his kids before he died instructing them to spend his fortune on conservation, science, and the arts. According to a 1998 article in the Wall Street Journal,Packard declared that the foundation’s highest priority “must be to reduce world-wide population growth. Whether that meant supporting family-planning clinics or abortion rights, he wrote, trustees should have the courage to proceed.” Sadly, it is clear that his children have followed through with his wishes.
While Soros did not give as much to Planned Parenthood as Buffet, he is making his mark in other ways. According to Politico (7/27/16), he has committed to give long time friend Hillary Clinton and other Democrat candidates and causes more than $25 million.
In the end, no amount of noble sounding rhetoric about how money will be used to rid the world of poverty, disease, hunger will be able to mask to whom the money is going and the purposes for which it will be used. The best spin money can buy cannot mask the reality of what abortion is and what it does to not just a mother and her unborn child, but how it destroys an economy and a nation.
In the meantime, the hundreds of millions this enormously wealthy handful of individuals and foundations gives to abortion promoting and performing groups will, for now, keep them operating, help them to get out their messages, and put many of their political candidates in office.
Though your gifts will be put to good use, you should know that the Pro-Life Movement counts not on the largesse of the Buffetts and the Soroses but on the truth, which we believe in the long run is of far greater value.
Life is still the best investment any of us will ever make.
LifeNews.com Note: Randall O’Bannon, Ph.D., is the director of education and research for the National Right to Life Committee. This column originally appeared at NRL News Today.
