Nation’s largest abortion provider lays off 20% of national staff after taking Madoff hit
http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=5016
Sucker punched by “investment” losses an important donor sustained thanks to the exposure of the alleged Ponzi scheme associated with New York http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6347 Bernie Madoff, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the nation’s top abortion provider, has had to cut back operations. So far in 2009 an estimated thirty staffers have been laid off, a cutback of 20%. The staffers were trainers and “consultants” for Planned Parenthood’s affiliate groups.
The apparent cause of the Planned Parenthood crisis has to do with the shut down of one of its key donor foundations, which closed shop in December in the immediate aftermath of the Madoff revelations, leaving a reported $484,000 hole in Planned Parenthood’s 2009 budget. The Picower Foundation, which maintained offices in Palm Beach and New York, lost a reported $1 billion because of the Madoff alleged Ponzi scheme, which went bust with his arrest and reported confession that his operation robbed investors of up to $50 billion.
According to a mission statement posted at idealist.org, a clearinghouse for nonprofits, the Picower Foundation provides grants in pursuit of an agenda: “The Foundation’s efforts to achieve a more equitable and inclusive society consists of supporting projects in human rights, reproductive rights and Jewish continuity.”
A similar foundation concerned with “Jewish continuity” that also blamed its closure on Madoff was the Lappin Foundation, which said that it “works to reverse the dilution of Jewish identity through intermarriage and assimilation by sending teenagers to Israel and supporting other Jewish education efforts.”The most famous Jewish advocacy victim of Madoff’s alleged swindle was the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, which was wiped out with a loss of over $15 million.
Barbara Picower, who established the foundation with her investor husband Jeffry in 1989, released a statement bemoaning the losses. Madoff’s “act of fraud has had a devastating impact on tens of thousands of lives as well as numerous philanthropic foundations and nonprofit organizations,” she said.
Among the other groups to suffer alongside Planned Parenthood are two other abortion advocacy groups, the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Reproductive Freedom Project of the ACLU. “Picower was one of a handful of foundations willing to stick their necks out and significantly fund the three organizations that handle virtually all major reproductive rights-related litigation and legal advocacy in the United States,” said Nancy Goldstein, blogging at Slate.com.
One campaign of the Reproductive Freedom Project may be put on hold now, a campaign which could have the effect of barring Roman Catholic and evangelical Christians from the pharmaceutical profession if laws are passed requiring pharmacists to stock and dispense “morning after” drugs. According to the Catholic News Agency, “the Reproductive Freedom Project has advocated limiting the ability of pharmacists to refuse to dispense contraceptives,” among them the “morning after” abortion pill. In a 2002 report called “Religious Refusals and Reproductive Rights,” the Reproductive Freedom Project called Catholic hospitals “the sectarian health system,” and advocated restrictions on their refusal to co-operate in actions related to abortion that they deem unethical. (The “health care system,” of course, was founded by Roman Catholics in the Middle Ages).
Planned Parenthood is a federation of close to one hundred affiliates, which operate over eight hundred local clinics in the United States with an operating budget of $1 billion. One third of that budget comes from government, an amount that totaled $336.7 million in 2007. At 33% of its budget, tax dollars are the second largest source of Planned Parenthood financing, next to the 35% that comes in from “health center income,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Planned Parenthood relies on foundation grants from groups such as the Carnegie Foundations, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for one quarter of its funding.
Despite its powerful connections and heavy funding, Planned Parenthood remains controversial for the abortions it provides. The group currently is under pressure from conservatives who aim to force government funding cuts on local and state levels to the group, taking advantage of the current climate of financial belt tightening.
In a statement about the layoffs, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood, a pillar of liberal activism, blamed the slumping economy for the financing crisis: “As with many other nonprofit organizations, Planned Parenthood has had to make staff reductions at our headquarters due to the challenging economic times facing our country. While taking this action is never easy, we want to ensure the millions of women and men who rely on Planned Parenthood as a health care provider that the reductions will not impact our ability to deliver care to those in need.”
Planned Parenthood will have to look elsewhere to overcome the Madoff/Picower losses. In an industry not known for taste, the Indiana affiliate made an ingenious attempt to cash in on the Christmas (sorry, “holiday”) spirit shortly before the Madoff meltdown, offering gift card stocking stuffers that could be http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=6157. An ad for the cards carried the slogan “Why not buy a loved one a gift this holiday season that they really need?”
Perhaps Planned Parenthood could look again to racists for a bailout. In early 2008, Planned Parenthood workers were exposed by an anti-abortion group http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3594 from people who said they wanted the money specifically used to abort black fetuses.
Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, an abortion rights pioneer who was a supporter of abortion in pursuit of eugenics, the “conscious breeding and evolution” of “superior” humans, which she claimed was “the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.” Such views are now, of course, embarrassingly politically incorrect for ultra-left groups like Planned Parenthood, who attempted to downplay the 2008 exposure. Their founder sought the same kind of low profile, saying at one point that “We do not want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.”