By Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D.

The first thing that strikes you about the 2009-10 Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) Annual Report is ... just how plain it is. Past PPFA annual reports have featured colorful portraits of different, diverse people, lots of colors and graphics, and, awkwardly, a few happy babies.

Those pretty pictures and that marketing copy are in a separate document, called "Creating Generation Healthy," which features the sort of thematic campaign that used to be part of each Planned Parenthood annual report. More on that in a minute.

The cover on the annual report, though, is just plain blue and white with the name and date, and there aren't any pictures in this report once you get past the obligatory photos of PPFA President Cecile Richards and PPFA Chair Valerie McCarthy. The most colorful things you'll find are a few pie charts on services, revenues, and expenditures.

Read closely enough, and you do find out that PPFA is still a $1 billion a year corporation (to be exact, a total budget of $1.0482 billion) and still the nation's biggest abortion chain, taking the lives of nearly 330,000 babies a year. But the presentation does leave you scratching your head and wondering-what's up with the toned down, more low-key message?

Of course, it could simply be that Planned Parenthood, like many other corporations, doesn't want to appear ostentatious in austere times.

Revenues at PPFA were in fact ever so slightly down in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010, dropping from $1.1 billion in the previous year to just over $1.048 billion in 2010. While still an enormous amount of money (especially a "non-profit"), this minute fall off nonetheless represents a drop for an organization that had been steadily increasing its revenues over the past decade.

Without any explanation we learn from the report that the number of abortions performed at Planned Parenthood dipped slightly as well. After an all-time high of 331,796 abortions in 2009, PPFA says that its clinics did 329,445 abortions for 2010, a difference of 2,351 fewer lost lives. (A January 2011 PPFA factsheet put the 2009 figure at 332,278; PPFA offers no explanation for the discrepancy. Either would be a record number of dead babies for PPFA.)

There is no special feature of abortion in the annual report, and mention of abortion in the marketing document is very brief. However, no one should minimize its significance to Planned Parenthood. Never forget that this is at the fulcrum of Planned Parenthood's political agenda and remains one of PPFA's top money makers, at going rates, accounting for at least $148.5 million of the group's revenues in 2010. (To be conservative, this calculation is based on the assumption that all abortions at Planned Parenthood are standard first-trimester suction abortions. In fact, PPFA clinics advertise and perform more expensive chemical and later term surgical abortions.)

That's why it is all the more appalling that American taxpayers provide such a large portion of the abortion giant's revenues. One of the understated tidbits in the annual report is the news that government funds and contracts are responsible for a lot larger portion of Planned Parenthood's revenues-46%-than had previously been reported.

With the report indicating private donations down by about 28% (or $85 million), and showing the group delivering fewer services, dependence on government funding becomes even more critical to Planned Parenthood's survival. Keep in mind, however, that PPFA is hardly suffering; this $1 billion dollar "non-profit" had $18.5 million more revenue than expenses.

"Services" were down across the board at Planned Parenthood by more than 200,000. But it is unclear whether the number of clients had changed: in both 2009 and 2010, PPFA says that its clinics saw about three million patients. Prenatal services, already paltry compared to abortion, were down 23%, dropping from 40,489 in 2009 to 31,098 in 2010. Adoptions were down again too, dropping from 977 in 2009 to 841 in 2010. This means that abortions outnumbered adoptions at Planned Parenthood in 2010 by a nearly 395 to 1 margin!

More specifically, of services explicitly for pregnant women-abortion, adoption, and prenatal care-nine out of ten women were sold abortions at Planned Parenthood.

While overall financial numbers were down, comparable with past reports, there were some very interesting shifts in some of the details. In recent reports, the percentage of revenues coming from "Government Grants and Contracts" ranged between 25% and 33%. Now, all of a sudden, in this report, they jump to 46%, close to half of Planned Parenthood's entire revenues!

This explains an awful lot about how and why Planned Parenthood so vehemently has fought to protect its government funding at the local, state, and federal levels.

A note in the report explains the change this way:

The apparent increase in this line item (categorized as "Government Grants and Contracts" in the 2008–09 annual report) stems mainly from a change in the way revenue data are presented in this year's report. The current report groups revenues by source (either government or non-government) rather than the manner of disbursement (income versus grants and contracts). In past reports, payments from Medicaid managed care plans have appeared as "health center income" rather than "government grants and contracts" because of the method of payment. Those same payments are listed as "Government Health Services Grants and Reimbursements" this year to reflect the ultimate source of the funds.

In other words, taxpayer dollars have always been paying a bigger portion of Planned Parenthood's bills than the group let on.

All the advanced scrutiny being given to Planned Parenthood in the past year, with votes on its funding on Capitol Hill and an investigation of its practices underway by a committee in the House, may be behind the revision and could be another reason for the no-frills, no-nonsense report this time around. When Congress was debating whether to defund Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, it turned out to be extremely difficult to pin down exactly how much money PPFA was getting from the federal government.

Overall, the 2009-10 annual report is considerably more low-key than past reports. Planned Parenthood does take credit for helping to pass President Obama's health care plan ("ObamaCare"), and says that thanks to its own "tireless efforts in the face of staunch opposition the new law expands care to millions of women and protects women's access to essential reproductive care."

The report (which can be read at http://www.plannedparenthood.org/about-us/annual-report-4661.htm) also briefly touts some of the non-abortion health services performed by its 840 "health centers" and 88 affiliates, its website (22 million visits), the role of its sex education programs (reaching more than 1.1 million), and its outreach in the "global community" ($1.6 million in grants to 48 "partner organizations" in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean). But this is done in just a few sentences with no pictures.

Planned Parenthood is still anxious to show itself as hip, trendy, and cutting edge for its primary market, young single sexually active women, but obviously realizes that that message conflicts with its image as a sober, serious provider of government-funded health care. Perhaps that's why, with this second audience in mind, there is another separate report.

The second-"Creating Generation Healthy"-is packed with pictures and graphics, on the same webpage as the annual report, with all the hype and marketing that seems to contain a lot of the usual blather about all of Planned Parenthood's programs, services, and political activity.

This cover of this one is not blank, but features the happy face of a young African American woman. The report swoons about a healthier world in the hands of an "open, accepting, innovative, and adventurous" new generation, which Planned Parenthood, of course, stands poised to accommodate with "safe," "smart," "connected," "strong," and "global" programs and services. (Curiously, the number of website visitors touted here is 30 million, not 22 million as in the annual report mentioned above.) This is the report where you get the picture of a young woman holding up a sign facing Capitol Hill, with the superimposed statement, "The number of Planned Parenthood supporters in on the rise, reaching a total of 5.7 million-and growing."

Abortion is mentioned only twice in that document, on page 4, in a list of services PPFA offers, and on page 12, when discussing its overseas work, dealing with its efforts to promote "access" to contraception and address "complications of unsafe abortion." (Abortion advocates like to argue that legalizing abortion makes it safe, but ignore how this takes at least one life-the child's-and often exposes the mother to the risks of poor medical conditions.)

Although mentioned only briefly in both reports, abortion is a critical factor tying both together. Whether one is talking about services, dollars, or marketing efforts, the truth is that abortion is one of the top money making services Planned Parenthood sells to the women in this strategically targeted age group.

That government money covers 46% of the abortion giant's budget means taxpayers have, willingly or not, a huge financial stake in this debate and legitimate basis for their ire. That members of that same organization vigorously defend pro-abortion policies and politicians only raises further concerns and questions.