Planned Parenthood targets college students: 79% within 5 miles of a university
by Ashleigh Weaver, Pregnancy on Campus Coordinator
Students for Life of America
Last semester I spent a lot of time working on the study, “Abortion Facilities Target College Students,” in essence to prove what we know: Planned Parenthood and independent abortion facilities target college students.
The Daily Caller just published a story on the study, which is located on our website.
Main findings
This study first looked at Life Dynamics’ study showing that most abortion facilities are located in racially disproportionate areas. We then examined all the zip codes (499) of the approximately 3,000 that were not located in disproportionately high racial areas to determine two things: if they had a university located within the zip code, and if there was a university located within five miles of the abortion facility. Out of these 499 zip codes: 72% of the facilities were located within 5 miles of a university….
The study then looked at all the Planned Parenthoods in the U.S. to make the same determination: how many universities were within the zip code of a PP and within 5 miles of a PP. Of the estimated 780 Planned Parenthood facilities in the United States, 615 of them, or 79%, are within 5 miles of a university. 46% of PPs are within the same zip code of a university….
By comparison, of a sample of 100 randomly selected zip codes, only 25% are located within 5 miles of a university.
According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, approximately 46% of abortions in America are performed on college-aged women. Women aged 18-29 are overrepresented among abortion patients. Those in their early 20s had the highest abortion index, and the highest relative abortion rate, of any age-group (“Characteristics of U.S. Abortion Patients, 2008”).
In the 1995 CDC study on College Health Risk Behavior, 35.1% of college students reported they had been pregnant or gotten someone pregnant. According to that same study, approximately 79.5% of college students (aged 18-24) have reported to have had sexual intercourse. Out of that 79.5 %, approximately 2.2% have gotten pregnant.
If there are 8,100 students on any given campus, with almost 80% engaging in sexual intercourse and 2.2% getting pregnant, then according to those statistics, around 142 students become pregnant each year. We also know that these college aged women (20-24) are at the most fertile time in their life.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
If these clinics are located in a large metropolitan area, the chances are that they will be located near minority neighborhoods and city universities/colleges. The Providence RI Planned Parenthood is near Brown University, Providence College (but we all know that purity worshipping Catholic girls would NEVER go to a Planned Parenthood), Johnson & Wales University, and RI College. The other Planned Parenthood in our area is in Killingly CT, a rural area so I guess they’re “targeting” farmers.
But seriously, what’s your problem? Many college students can’t afford private Ob/Gyns. Would you leave them without any affordable reproductive health care? Do you actually think that without Planned Parenthood, female college students would remain virgins? When I “stood” for Planned Parenthood, many of the speakers and rally participants were college students. Many of the escorts are from the Brown community. Planned Parenthood helps women with contraception which thus lowers the abortion rate. (Yeah, I know that you don’t believe that)
Young college women are not stupid. Your argument that they are the victims of “targeting” is as ludicrous as any of your other arguments about “protecting life.”
Thanks for the great post! It’s shocking how high the percentage is near college campuses. I’d be interested to see the percentages of college campuses who have a planned parenthood within 5 miles of them.
“Young college women are not stupid.” Now, isn’t the entire premise of Planned Parenthood that they are? That without Planned Parenthood, they wouldn’t be able to hack it in life, they would never know about contraception, they wouldn’t be able to find out where to get breast exams? Isn’t your desire for abortion to remain legal rooted in the idea that people will engage in stupid, risky behavior and someone needs to be there to clean up the mess for them? Isn’t someone smart enough to attend a 4-year institution that costs tens of thousands of dollars able to develop strategies to take care of their health care needs without the assistance of the nation’s largest provider and promoter of abortion? I personally would not call them stupid, but weak at times like many of us, and PP plays to their weakness, and like any good business, goes where the profits lead. It’s just to bad they don’t serve their fellow people but destroy them.
What Chris said. Planned Parenthood constantly argues that young women are stupid – too stupid to know how to take a pill once a day, too stupid to know how to get or use condoms, and too stupid to know the difference between an abortion mill and a crisis pregnancy center.
Today, Franciscan University in Ohio decided to no longer provide health insurance to students in the face of Obama’s fascist, anti-First Amendment contraception mandate. The proabortion God haters over on The Huffington Post are furious – they want Franciscan to be taxed, abandoned by students, or just outright taken over by the federal government. Franciscan is being called anti-Christian, anti-woman, and all of the other fun stuff that Catholics are usually called by proabortion liberal extremists. According to these Obama worshippers, the Catholic Church must abandon its principles or else be punished and/or driven out of the country. But remember, it’s the Republicans who are totalitarian.
“What Chris said. Planned Parenthood constantly argues that young women are stupid – too stupid to know how to take a pill once a day, too stupid to know how to get or use condoms, and too stupid to know the difference between an abortion mill and a crisis pregnancy center.”
As a pro-life man, John is obviously unfamiliar with what Planned Parenthood does for young college women. It provides them with inexpensive contraception, PAP smears, HIV testing and all the other stuff far cheaper than private ob/gyns. I guess being pro-life means being opposed to women having inexpensive health care. And BTW, lifers, if Planned Parenthood shut down, the already cash and personnel strapped clinics would be overwhelmed with the increased caseload. Not that you care. And Chris – college students have always engaged in risky behavior – even Catholic students. Are you saying that they if they don’t have access to contraception, they won’t have sex? Are you that naive? (Guess you’ve never attended a Catholic school!!!!).
Oh well, nice to know that the nice pro-lifers would rather see Planned Parenthood shut down and college students be at increased risk of unplanned pregnancies and STD’s. How very pro-life!
”I personally would not call them stupid, but weak at times like many of us, and PP plays to their weakness.”
Young women with health care plans go to private ob/gyns who provide them with contraceptives. Are these doctors playing to the “weakness” of women. (And being sexually active isn’t a weakness. That this is the mind-set of the pro-life movement underscores why those in the reality based community regards them as a group of bizarre, misogynist, medieval zealots.
“Franciscan is being called anti-Christian, anti-woman, and all of the other fun stuff that Catholics are usually called by proabortion liberal extremists.”
And right they are. But you guys must be singing hosannas in the highest that Franciscan is putting the Catholic Church ahead of the needs of women – which is what the Catholic Church is all about anyway so no big surprise there. If the students are devout Catholics, they’ll just have to figure out a way to deal with it. Maybe – OMG – they could (like the Catholic students in Providence) head on down to Planned Parenthood. Oh, wait. Good Franciscan students would never have sex outside of marriage and if they are married, “every sperm is sacred.”
I see CC is hysterical and flipping out just like the folks over on HuffPo. This one really galls them, obviously. How DARE the Catholic Church defy our mighty Lord Obama? How dare they think that freedom of religion applies to them and their evil cult? Every good little liberal knows that freedom of religion only applies to good religions, like Wicca and LaVeyanism. And, of course, the “Christian” churches that are proabortion in spite of the fact that abortion is pretty much the greatest rejection of Jesus Christ and his Gospel that you can possibly commit.
Caterpie Coach,
If you want your Boulder Badge, you’re going to have to train your Pokemon and ideally teach them some new moves.
Planned Parenthood does less than 2% of all pap tests nationwide, and performs more abortions than they supposedly prevent (according to their own numbers). This, of course, assumes for the sake of the argument that they do not underreport their abortion numbers.
I’m not going to hold my breath.
It seems like people of CC’s ilk and the like think that happy, fulfilled women sprang into existance when PP opened it’s doors. Just think, all those hundreds of millions of women throughout history who all believed themselves to be happy, content, fulfilled, and utterly useful and needed were really just delusional, and without PP all women will either be forced to sink back into delusions of grandur or miserablly be chained to actions that are wholly uncontrolable. Because, don’t you know, *every* woman *must* be sexually active to be happy and every woman who isn’t is just delusionally chained to misogynistic paternalistic slavery to overbearing men who must keep them locked away to avoid them breaking ‘free’.
Why is it so blasted difficult to believe that people were, are, and can be complete and happy without indulging in every elective whim?
Yes CC, if women have less access to contraceptives they will choose to engage less in activities that lead to what they are trying to avoid, pregnancy/stds. Sex is a lovely part of life, and it’s also wholly elective and completely avoidable if a person so chooses. So if the risks outweigh the benefit, they don’t engage. Taking away ready access to free contraceptives doesn’t kill anyone, and it doesn’t *make* anyone engage in reckless behavior, nor can it make anyone unhappy in and of itself. It simply changes the weighted balance when people decide upon their actions. Less risk means you engage in an action even if it has low reward, more risk means you avoid the action unless and until you believe the reward to outweigh the risk.
No offense but you haven’t stumbled upon any great conspiracy. You’re just stating what everyone already knew. Planned Parenthoods would obviously be near colleges. Women in that age group represent the kind of women who do not want to get pregnant or become mothers and want to have safe sex. Do you expect them to set up Planned Parenthoods in the middle of nowhere? No, they set them up in high traffic places where the most people can have access to their services.
The other reason that they are located near college campuses is not the inexpensive BC – since most universities hand it out for very little $ – but that many university health plans pay for abortions – and all of that without the family knowing. Our university here always asks: was the pregnancy “planned.” They look at pregnancy as a disease for a student – instead of seeing that families and women can still have an education if she has a family…
what a better way than offer services to a young mother – the family services area, psychology and sociology departments can offer programs to compliment and help women and families in need. They can even incorporate these programs into the undergraduate and graduate programs – providing hands-on experiences for all involved. It could help the university to put together a cooperative and innovative program for family services/social work/ etc.
A win-win vs viewing pregnancy as a disease, and forcing a woman to deal with everything like she has some communicable disease. Children help us grow – and being compassionate and helpful as a university and society must mean more than death to the child and abandonment and utility for the mom.
Planned Parenthood knows how to make a buck off of others’ misery. The university wants to look the other way, since the compassionate and comprehensive solution is more intensive and takes energy and commitment. But as a society – we can do more and do better. Love can win!
Do you expect them to set up Planned Parenthoods in the middle of nowhere?
Yep, that’s what I expect, Lynn. Put all of them on the moon and you won’t hear me complaining. Put ’em on the dark side of the moon because that’s what they like.
Businesses tend to set up shop in areas where the products or services they offer will be in higher demand. What a scoop. This is some top-notch scholarship here.
Huh, and I thought it was low income women who REALLY needed Planned Parenthood’s “services”, not college kids from middle class homes. Actually wasn’t it Sandra Fluke’s argument that college students couldn’t get contraceptives? And yet now you’re telling me that colleges have a Planned Parenthood right around the corner.
Great news! All we need to do is have a clinic on campus where students can get pap smears and birth control and those Planned Parenthoods near non-religious schools can close! Hurrah!
Businesses tend to set up shop in areas where the products or services they offer will be in higher demand.
I knew it! Abortion is a business. Your buddies have been trying to pass it off as healthcare, joan. Could you tell them to start calling abortion what it is?
I’ve sometimes taken part in vigils outside the “Family Planning Associates” clinic in San Marcos. It’s across the street from San Marcos State University!
“I knew it! Abortion is a business. Your buddies have been trying to pass it off as healthcare, joan. Could you tell them to start calling abortion what it is? ”
Healthcare isn’t a business? What socialist paradise are you living in?
Oh, we already do suffer from such haunting thoughts. The question is, how is it that you, an alleged human, do not?
I went to three colleges/universities and now I work at one, and each of them has a student health center with doctors and nurse practitioners that took care of all (or my students’) health concerns. In grad school, I even had a pregnancy scare and all was handled by the on-campus student health. Planned Parenthood was not needed, and its services would have been redundant—oh wait…..EXCEPT FOR THOSE ABORTIONS IT PROVIDES.
As an aside to CC, it’s become a script for you to always refer to your tortured Catholic school background and to paint all Catholic girls as secret sluts. I’m going to encourage you to see some therapy here, CC, instead of bringing all your projected angst and guilt to this board where it is really misplaced and, well, sort of stupid.
Nice obscure Monty Python reference CC, but when I was talking about weakness I was referring to their efforts to convince women that their children aren’t really “people” and it would be easier and better for them to just tear their unborn child apart. If were going to examine Planned Parenthood based on how many people they help, imagine how much more affordable your health insurance would be had Planned Parenthood not taken the lives of millions of young, healthy future citizens and insurance customers. Our society on many levels is currently obsessed with the short-term, so much so we’re willing to destroy our futures for temporary gains. Planned Parenthood is the epitome of that mindset. If they gave up abortion, they wouldn’t be nearly as controversial and could focus on all those other things you say is so central to their purpose. I never attended a Catholic school but I learned the golden rule and that nothing is more medieval than using violence to satisfy your desires.
“As an aside to CC, it’s become a script for you to always refer to your tortured Catholic school background and to paint all Catholic girls as secret sluts.”
Just talking a little reality which you folks seem to deny at every opportunity. You just exposed your Freudian slip when you used the word “sluts” to describe young women (myself included) who were sexually active. Obviously, there were many students who were not sexually active. But despite the cult of purity and virginity, extolled by the Catholic Church, not all girls bought into that. That you think that all young people, exposed to a strict version of morality, are chaste is a little naive and, well, sort of stupid.
But nice to know that you folks would rather see sexually active young people not have access to the kinds of affordable comprehensive reproductive health care that Planned Parenthood provides – and this be exposed to unplanned pregnancies and STD’s. Meanwhile, young people who have money or a health care plan, can avail themselves to private ob/gyns who will provide them with the same care that Planned Parenthood provides. I guess that kind if inequitable access to health care is no problem for right to lifers who see forced birth as something that will make everybody live happily ever after.
Again, CC, your projections add nothing. And If I didn’t know how actively you need abortion in order to operate like a woman in this world, I would almost have some sympathy for you. Almost.
“If were going to examine Planned Parenthood based on how many people they help, imagine how much more affordable your health insurance would be had Planned Parenthood not taken the lives of millions of young, healthy future citizens and insurance customers.”
Here’s the thing, Nostradamus. You’re claiming that all those aborted “babies” would be happy, productive members of society. Wrong. While some might be, there would be others who might be mentally/physically disabled or in prison. What you seem to be saying is that childbirth is related to demographics and that’s exactly the argument that the Chinese use to support their forced abortion policy. You, however, want a forced childbirth policy which puts women in the role of incubators for future productive citizens. As I point out, that ain’t necessarily so.
Again, CC, your projections add nothing.
Again, Courtnay, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. Not all young women choose to remain virgins. (And those who do should not be bullied) In fact, recent data suggests that teen pregnancy is declining because those non-virgins are using birth control more effectively. Nice to know that you would deny them access to these techniques – cuz, as one of the above posters noted, with less access to birth control, folks will be less sexually active – Not!
The PP near my hometown in West Chester PA is near West Chester university. They cater to the college students and the large hispanic population.
The PP near my hometown in West Chester PA is near West Chester university. They cater to the college students and the large hispanic population.
Wow Sydney you don’t live too far from me. West Chester is a beautiful little town.
I don’t understand why PP would be needed near colleges and universities, since most of them offer comprehensive student health centers — except for one reason, as Courtnay pointed out.
“You’re claiming that all those aborted “babies” would be happy, productive members of society. Wrong. While some might be, there would be others who might be mentally/physically disabled or in prison. What you seem to be saying is that childbirth is related to demographics and that’s exactly the argument that the Chinese use to support their forced abortion policy.”
You set yourself in judgement of others, saying because they may make mistakes they must be condemned to death. Are those empowered college students genetically fated to produce legions of feeble-minded reprobates beyond reform? I’m just pointing out that if you set up your entire government and society on the notion that we can pile debt, future insurance payments and social security on the backs of the next generation, it would be wise and sustainable not to take their lives based on your insinuation that they will be useless eaters. After all, they’ll be the only ones taking care of you when you inevitably return back to the state you began your own life in, utterly dependent on the goodwill and compassion of someone else for your survival. If we did follow your golden rule, we would not be unjustified in simply doing away with you once you cease being useful as you suggest must be allowed to be done to hundreds of millions of those yet to be brought into existence.
Nice to know that you would deny them access to these techniques – cuz, as one of the above posters noted, with less access to birth control, folks will be less sexually active – Not!
CC believes we simple, little women folk can’t control ourselves. We need those big, smart men to tell us what to do because we are to dumb to learn to say no.
Naturally, all the national pro life leaders will continue to completely ignore the dozens of universities themselves who do abortions in house, usually a few hundred feet from the dorms.
They only care about Planned Parenthood. Every one of these universities are free to kill to their heart’s content, unencumbered by any national pro life leaders paying any attention whatsoever. Articles like this are yet another indication of their blinders.
” If were going to examine Planned Parenthood based on how many people they help, imagine how much more affordable your health insurance would be had Planned Parenthood not taken the lives of millions of young, healthy future citizens and insurance customers.”
But I thought the reason there are so many unwanted pregnancies is that the culture of death/convenience/whatever fostered by legal abortion directly leads to people being much less sexually responsible, which in turn is what causes those unwanted pregnancies to begin with? If this is the case, then those “millions of young, healthy, future citizens” would never have been born either way.
Um, Sean…Here we are! Come back from your parallel universe and join us in REALITY! Planned Parenthood is the MOTHERSHIP (that’s almost funny) of abortion’s death and destruction of both women and babies. If prolife pressure can buckle their grip on the abortion industry, all others will follow. PP as it functions as predator, sweeps into a community under the guise of “women’s health” and makes its money off the failure of its inferior bc thru abortions, dumbing down what every woman knows in her heart is true and right: life begins at the beginning, and the beginning is in utero. Then PP manages to wage the REAL war on women which is to get them in a room with stirrups and whispher in their ears the great lie:we can take care of this blob for 500.00.now lie back.
Please send us a list of these dozens on on-site university abortion mills, and I promise you I will devote a good portion of my summer figuring out how to be the proverbial killer bee in their bonnet. But for now, Planned Parenthood is the devil and it’s GOT.TO.GO.
Preaching to the choir regarding Planned Parenthood was a complete waste of your time, Courtnay. I’m the guy who stung PP with a statement from the Albemarle County, VA police department saying they had never heard from the local PP office about any child sex traffickers during or after the Live Action stings..
Getting back to my original point, my group has concentrated a laser focus, and hundreds of hours of work, on the University of Virginia – with an eye towards Virginia Commonwealth University also. SFLA actually came in and out of UVA with Dr. B and never even bothered to contact us. Nor were the abortions being performed in the same building Dr. B was speaking in even mentioned as far as I know.
You want a list of the others? Well, good luck with that! We’ve done our job in Virginia (there are two), we know that Maryland is crawling with them, and Pennsylvania told us they have a privacy law that prevents them telling anyone (doubtful, but we don’t have the resources to find out). There are none south(east) of us to our knowledge, unless you include Florida – which is an unknown. Most of the Big Ten schools have abortion rooms in their medical centers, except UW-Madison who doesn’t have one but farms it out to PP. There are about a dozen schools who proudly proclaim it as members of the PP “family planning partnership” also. There are probably dozens in the northeast alone.
I can only guess, but I suspect that the cause of this purposeful blindness here is at least partly due to UCLA being probably the most prolific university abortion provider in the country. You may have heard of a national pro life leader who went there, and whose family continues to go there.
Sean, are you going to give me a list of schools you know for a fact are doing abortions in their student health centers or not?
What’s your issue then? We’re not spending time on the RIGHT abortionists?
Oh, and BTW, thanks for your pro-life work. Any time I spend railing against PP is NEVER a complete waste of time.
It’s dangerous to feed trolls. Sometimes they’re so bad they disappear, and you end up looking like you’re talking to yourself! ;)
Courtnay, I just gave you a list. The nine of us do not have the resources, money or time to make it airtight and complete. Our activism does not make us money – it has only cost us money. BIG difference.
You can spend weeks compiling that list if you want – please do – but I can assure you it will be ignored if you do. There is a rather embarrassing contradiction regarding funding for abortion providers at the top of national pro life as I have already mentioned. The universities will continue to get a free pass.
“it would be wise and sustainable not to take their lives based on your insinuation that they will be useless eaters.”
Nice projection but I didn’t say that. What I did say is that not all aborted fetuses result in happy, productive citizens. Nowhere did I infer that they would be useless. If you’ve followed my comments, you would know that I fully support those social safety net programs, for those with mental/physical problems, that some conservative pro-lifers want to dismantle. Bottom line, women should not be forced to give birth in order to solve the social security problem.
“Then PP manages to wage the REAL war on women which is to get them in a room with stirrups…”
Private ob/gyns do the same thing. When are you going to demand that they stop doing it?
Well, then what do you think we should do, Sean?
I’m just a mom with 3 kids, but I do have a big mouth. :)
Most of you couldn’t tell the difference between shrimp and a fetus at ten weeks.
Can’t let you do that, Star Fox.
At eight weeks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gray30.png
See how they look exactly alike!
http://www.baby2see.com/development/week10.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrimp
8-O
Pfft.
Lrning: best. post. ever.
Nathan, seriously? My 3 year old can tell the difference between a 10 week old inutero baby and a shrimp. Provided he’s still innocent enough to gleefully proclaim ‘baby!’ when shown a picture of the first and thinks anything that lives in the water is a ‘gooey fish’…but it’s not like he mistakes one for the other. For that matter my 2 year old (correctly) says ‘baby’ when shown a picture of a fetus, although I’m pretty sure she has no idea what a shrimp is.
Hi Nathan,
I miscarried my 2nd child into my hand at 10 weeks.
Totally could tell the difference!!
Is that the argument you are putting forth that abortion doesn’t end the life of a fully alive human being??