With the renewed attention on Planned Parenthood, as a result of the Susan Komen controversy, the Washington Post republished a chart that shows the distribution of services provided by the organization. In this chart, which counts the totality of services – rather than bundling services by recipient – we learn that of the 11.4 million services rendered by PP, 35% are for STD diagnosis or treatment, 35% are for contraception, 16% for cancer screeening and prevention, and 3% for abortion services.
Methodology is everything, of course, and those critical of PP argue that you shouldn't unbundle services because, for example, a person who seeks an abortion may also be receiving other services. This appears to be true because these 11.4 million services were rendered to a total of 3 million clients. Of that number, 329,000 received abortion services – something like 11% of all patients.
Of course, another interesting implication of this data is that individuals who come in for abortion services may also be receiving STD or cancer screening. This suggests that while abortion services may draw individuals to PP, PP is then able to expand ther services to include procedures that that presumably everyone agrees are positive. If this is true, it suggests that a ban on abortion might reduce abortions but could also cause a spike not only in unregulated abortion services but a dip in provision of these other health-improving services offered by PP and received by patients as an unintended (but desirable) byproduct of seeking legitimate abortion services in the first instance. (Of course, there is an argument that women who, as a result of an abortion ban, carry to term, might receive some of these collateral services anyway – either during prenatal care or at delivery.)