Even if their claim was true and destroying human life in the womb only accounted for three percent of Planned Parenthood’s activities, it would still make them one of the greatest purveyors of injustice and evil in America. We shouldn’t quietly tolerate the abortion giant duping the public by using misleading statistics. But even more importantly, we must never remain silent about the moral horror Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics commit by killing our nation’s children.

“If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it,” said Charles Haddon Spurgeon in an 1855 sermon, “but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly; it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old Proverb, ‘A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.’”

Almost a decade ago, Planned Parenthood began telling a monstrous lie, one so light and airy that it continues to fly around the globe: that abortions represent only three percent of the services they provide. Although the claim has been repeatedly debunked—even by some abortion supporters—the truth is still trying to catch up with.

Since Planned Parenthood continues even today to spread this misleading statistic, it’s worth taking the time to explain yet again why it’s a blatant attempt to dupe the American people.

When All ‘Services’ Are Equal

An effective way to make a misleading claim appear more plausible is to hide it within a truthful package. Planned Parenthood does this by defining the term “service” to mean a “discrete clinical interaction.” A “service” in one of their clinics can therefore include anything from giving out a pamphlet on gonorrhea to performing a surgical abortion. To Planned Parenthood, whether an action cost pennies or hundreds of dollars, takes minutes or hours, they are all equal—at least for the purpose of obfuscation—when lumped under the rubric of a “service.”

This allows them to take extraordinary liberties in comparing the services they provide. For instance, in 2012 Planned Parenthood health centers saw approximately three million patients, who collectively received nearly 11 million services.”

In that year, Planned Parenthood claims to have performed 3,278,111 tests for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), gave out 2,129,855 forms of contraceptives to women, and performed 327,166 abortions. (Based on this type of counting, Planned Parenthood could plausibly claim they are in the STD business since that category accounts for almost half (40.8 percent) of their services.)

So why is this classification of “services” so misleading? To show how they are concealing their lie, let’s look at an alternate example using the same method of counting and comparison.

Counting Steaks and Services

Imagine tonight is your birthday dinner, and you splurge on your diet at PP’s Steakhouse. You order a 32-ounce porterhouse steak, a house salad, a loaded baked potato, mixed vegetables, and a hot fudge sundae. During the meal you consumed thousands of calories. But how many actual food items did you eat?

Most people would say four. But PP’s Steakhouse disagrees; they say you’ve eaten 33 food items.

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