Planned Parenthood director, Dr Leana Wen, was sacked after less than a year leading the company, for not prioritising abortion enough.
Starting in September 2018, Dr Wen led Planned Parenthood – which performed 332,757 abortions making it the largest abortion provider in the USA – until July of this year.
Speaking to the New York Times she said:
“There was immediate criticism [after her hiring] that I did not prioritize abortion enough. While I am passionately committed to protecting abortion access, I do not view it as a stand-alone issue… For me, as a physician, it was also simply good medical care to treat the whole patient.”
“Perhaps the greatest area of tension was over our work to be inclusive of those with nuanced views about abortion,” she wrote. “I reached out to people who wrestle with abortion’s moral complexities,” she added.
Dr Wen’s sacking comes at the same time as increasing numbers of Planned Parenthood employees are leaving the company due to the fact that it company seems to put financial concerns over quality patient care.
Marie Stopes International in the UK has faced similar accusations in recent years with the Care Quality Commission finding a “cattle market” culture in one of their clinics and finding evidence of staff being incentivised to increase abortions through staff bonuses.
In a damning report from 2017, inspectors found evidence of a policy at all 70 Marie Stopes clinics, which saw staff calling women who had decided against having an abortion to offer them another appointment. The report also outlined “doctors signing off consent forms in batches of 60 and failures to follow safety procedures.”
Catherine Robinson from Right To Life UK said:
“Marie Stopes International and Planned Parenthood continue to show they are more concerned with income than with the well-being of their clients.
“At the beginning of August we found that chief executive of Marie Stopes earned £434,500, which included a 100% bonus for his role in providing abortions by the millions across the globe.”
“The amount the head of Marie Stopes was paid in 2018 would put him in the top-10 highest earners in the charity sector.”
(Photo credit AdobeStock:Mikael Damkier)
