Category: Providers and Money

Many pro-choice groups have complained that most counties in the United States do not have an abortion clinic. They argue that rural women need to drive long distances to reach abortion clinics, and often blame pro-lifers for this. In reality, the main reason that clinics are usually located in cities has to do with money. From an article in the New York Times:

“In Detroit, and in other large metropolitan areas around the country, there are not too few abortion providers, as abortion proponents have lamented for years. There are too many. It is still true that fewer hospitals are providing abortions, fewer doctors outside abortion clinics are offering the procedure and 86 percent of counties in the country have no abortion provider.

But, over the past few years, as the number of abortions has declined, abortions increasingly have been concentrated in specialty clinics in cities and pockets of competition have developed.

So while women in rural areas must sometimes drive hundreds of miles to the nearest clinic, in cities and suburbs there are price wars and competition over amenities. Doctors have refused to train colleagues, fearing they will only help a potential competitor in a lucrative, often cash-only, business.

…. Clinic owners say they have little choice but to cluster in cities — that is the only way they can find enough patients. Ruth Arick, the owner of Choice Pursuits in DeLand, Fla., which does management consulting for abortion clinics, said that a population of about 200,000 is needed to support a full-fledged clinic.”

In addition, pro-choice people often blame pro-lifers for a shortage of providers, claiming that doctors fear violence. In reality, stigma is a major reason why doctors don’t do abortions. Another reason is the emotional trauma of tearing apart developing babies every day.

A third reason is that doctors don’t want to train competitors. From the New York Times article:

“One doctor in Detroit, who spoke on condition he not be identified, saying he feared hostility from his colleagues, said that when he finished medical school, trained in obstetrics and gynecology, he asked abortion doctors in the area to train him. He was turned away.”

GINA KOLATA “As Abortion Rate Decreases, Clinics Compete for Patients” The NY Times December 30, 2000

Abortion is a business, like any other. Clinics do not do abortions for free. Abortionists and clinic owners are out to make money off of the women who come in for abortions.

 

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Abortionist Tommy Tucker (read a first-hand account from one of his clinic workers here) opened his own Birmingham clinic, four years prior to speaking with The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. The paper reported that Tucker spends thousands of dollars lobbying the Alabama Legislature and fighting abortion restrictions in Mississippi:

“It started out as a financial thing,” Tucker told the paper, “But I got heavy into the [abortion rights] movement and realized there was a lot of need for physicians. We’re trying to make the people that are here on the earth have a better chance at success in life. We think we help a lot of people.”

The article describes Tucker as a person who considers himself as much a capitalist as a crusader and says he makes about $ 200,000 a year, which he says is low for obstetricians. He hopes income from all six clinics will eventually push his annual income to $ 700,000.

Tucker described himself to the paper as having

“a tremendous ego but being tremendously insecure,” and he says much of that insecurity is rooted in fear of financial ruin.”

“Abortion doctor says it’s the cause, and the cash that keeps him driving” The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, May 16, 1993

Dr. Tucker eventually lost his license for a fatal botched abortion where he refused to help a woman who was bleeding to death, leaving her with an untrained clinic employee. Read the story here.

Quoted by Life Dynamics

 

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Former abortion clinic worker Nina Whitten says:

“Every single transaction that we did was cash money. We wouldn’t take a check, or even a credit card. If you didn’t have the money, forget it. It was unusual at all for me to take 10,000 to 15,000 a day to the bank – in cash. It’s a lie when they tell you they’re doing it to help women because they’re not. They’re doing it for the money.”

“Pro-Choice 1990: Skeletons in the Closet” New Dimensions, October 1990, 31

 

Read Nina Whitten’s story here.

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Merle Hoffman, founder of an abortion clinic, has no qualms about taking in millions of dollars from her abortion business. After describing how she carries a gun to shoot any violent anti-abortion protesters she might encounter, the author of the article about her says:

“….she doesn’t think material possessions are unfeminist, either. Impeccably coiffed – signaling more Upper East Side doyenne than die-hard boomer activist — she wears an enormous glittering ring she designed with the symbol of Choices, combining the caduceus and infinity symbols.

Hoffman herself then says:

“If there’s a 1 percent at this point, feminists should be part of that 1 percent until we get to 50-50, or 60-40,” Hoffman says. “Why not? I trust myself with power.”

Irin Carmen Abortion pioneer: Defend rights or lose them Salon MONDAY, JAN 2, 2012

Abortion is a very lucrative business for clinic owners and abortionists. Many abortionists make millions of dollars from their operations, flying from clinic to clinic or working in a chain of clinics.

No abortion clinic does abortions for free.

Elsewhere in the article, Hoffman admits that she knows that abortion is the taking of a life. 

Read more about abortion and money here.

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Associate Editor Meredith Oakley’s column entitled: Abortion business is profitable states,

“Abortion, you see, is something of a cash cow at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the facility against which abortion opponents filed a lawsuit in 1991 on the ground that UAMS was violating the amended Arkansas Constitution by performing abortions for reasons other than to save mothers’ lives. According to testimony by Dr. Harry Ward, the UAMS chancellor, the abortion program is self-supporting. Indeed, thanks to the exorbitant rates imposed on the paying customers, the UAMS abortion program generates enough profit to cover the debts of the non-paying customers. Consider last week’s (State Court opinion, on funding of abortion with tax dollars) : “It appears that the charges billed by UAMS far exceed costs, since full-pay patients cover the costs of those patients who do not pay.” The opinion noted that UAMS charged $ 2,500 for an abortion through June 1, 1992, but later raised the charge to $ 4,000. Not only is the state still in the abortion business, it’s doing very, very well.”

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette ,Abortion business is profitable: 5-11-1997

For more quotes about how abortion is profitable, go here.

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“Planned Parenthood’s bottom line is numbers. And, with abortion as its primary money-maker, that means implementing a quota. I know this is true because I worked at one of their Texas clinics for 8 years, two as the clinic director… As a Planned Parenthood clinic manager, I was directed to double the number of abortions our clinic performed in order to drive up revenue.  In keeping, Planned Parenthood headquarters recently issued a directive mandating that all of its affiliates provide abortions by 2013.”

ABBY JOHNSON ”Exposing the Planned Parenthood business model” LifeSiteNews.com http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/exposing-the-planned-parenthood-business-model/

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One abortionist explained the rationale behind why doctors see patients for such a short time in clinics:

“They [doctors] are expensive tools and should be used for what only they could do, and everything else should be done by people that cost less.”

Carole Joffe. Doctors of Conscience: the Struggle to Provide Abortion before and after Roe Versus Wade (Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon press, 1995) 149

He did not comment on how this lack of doctor-patient contact affected the quality of abortion care. Here we also see that abortion clinics or unlike any other business, to maximize profits.

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Author James D Slack describing “Michelle”, who owns two abortion clinics:

“By every definition, however, Michelle is the quintessential capitalist. She currently charges $500 for a medical (drug) abortion up to the seventh week; $425 for first trimester surgical abortion with a light anesthetic and $475 for one with a heavy anesthetic; and for a second trimester abortion, about an additional hundred dollars per week and maxing out at $1100. After hours (privacy) abortion start around $625, maxing out around $1300. All fees are paid in advance. With an estimated 3000 clients annually from just one of her clinics, some with second trimester abortions, it is likely that she grosses more than 1.5 million. Assuming this is the same at the “Western” clinic she probably grosses around $3 million yearly.”

James D Slack Abortion, Execution, and the Consequences of Taking Life (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2009) page 48

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From Dr. Anthony Levantino, former abortion provider:

“Along the way you find out you make a lot of money doing abortions…I’ll give you an example. When I am going to deliver a baby, I’m going to have that woman in my office for seven to eight months; she will have unlimited office visits. I get calls all hours of the day and night. More often than not, I’m getting up in the middle of the night. In Eastern New York, I can tell you, at this time of year, it’s not a particularly fun thing to do: to go out in a blizzard and drive to the hospital, sit by a bedside for hours watching somebody in labor, accomplishing the delivery, hoping to God that everything works out well, as it usually does. And then following her afterward; follow-up visits in the office. Then you wait and you expect that everything’s over. Usually it is over, but sometimes its not. Six or seven years later you suddenly get a request from a lawyer that they want the medical records because the baby has a problem of some sort. That doesn’t mean you’re responsible, but this nation is set up in such a way that families, if they have a deformed or an unhealthy child for any reason, and health care costs being what they are…You have no recourse; you have no source of funds other than going back and suing the people who did the delivery in the first place……Or, I can do an abortion. I can work in an abortion clinic. I work 9 to 5; I’m never bothered at night; I never have to go out on weekends; I more money than my obstetrician brethren. And I don’t have to face the liability. That’s a big factor, a huge perk.”

“In my practice, we were averaging between $250 and $500 for an abortion, and it was cash. That’s the only time as a doctor you can say, either pay me up front or I’m not going to take care of you. It’s totally elective… Either you have the money or you don’t. And they get it.”

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