In the news:
Originally published Friday, February 3, 2012 at 9:06 PM
Details about the services offered by Planned Parenthood
Most of Planned Parenthood's services — 71 percent — are for birth control, and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases.
To many people, breast-cancer screening means a mammogram. But for millions of poor, mostly young women who visit Planned Parenthood, it is usually just a physical exam by the only health professional they may ever see.
Those clinical breast exams are controversial; government advisers don't endorse them. Yet for some, the exam has helped find breast cancer. And Susan G. Komen for the Cure isn't the only group paying Planned Parenthood to do them; the government does, too. Komen funds relatively few.
Other facts about Planned Parenthood:
• Most of its services — 71 percent — are for birth control, and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases. Abortions made up 3 percent of its services in 2010. Cancer screening accounted for about 15 percent.
• Most clients are too young for breast-cancer screening under most guidelines, although they are prime age for cervical-cancer screening.
• It doesn't follow federal guidelines, which do not endorse clinical breast exams and recommend mammograms every other year starting at 50. Instead, Planned Parenthood does a physical breast exam on any woman of any age as part of a regular physical, and refers for mammograms any women 40 or older.
• Komen paid for 170,000 of the more than 4 million clinical breast exams Planned Parenthood performed nationwide in the past five years, and 6,400 of Planned Parenthood's 70,000 mammography referrals in that time.
