By Jim Sedlak
Planned Parenthood took its first public baby step in the last couple of weeks in an effort to become a major player in the birth control industry in the United States.
Before explaining that statement, let me first recount how Planned Parenthood is in the process of gaining control of the national abortion industry. Back in 1992, Planned Parenthood committed 8.6 percent of all the abortions in the United States with just a few abortion facilities. It set about to expand those numbers. Today, Planned Parenthood operates 51.1 percent of all the abortion facilities in the United States. More important is the fact that Planned Parenthood currently operates 85.7 percent of all the abortion pill facilities and created the telemedicine-abortion business for this market. It is conservatively estimated that Planned Parenthood takes in about $250 million of the 800-million-dollar abortion industry in the United States.
While making these major strides in taking over the nation’s abortion business, it has seen its number of medical facilities fall from 938 to 590. Planned Parenthood has been looking for a way to increase its birth control—and abortion—business despite the falling clinic numbers. Its answer is to create an app that would allow it to do both without the need for physical facilities. It has been working on this for several years and is now rolling out this digital product: Planned Parenthood Direct. PP is hoping this product will allow it to keep expanding its dominance in the abortion business through more telemedicine abortions, as well as through starting its expansion of its role in the overall national birth control business.
On the surface, Planned Parenthood Direct appears to be simply an app that allows people to order birth control on their smart phone or computer and have the product shipped to them. But the real intent of this new “service” becomes clearer as you dig down through the process. You see, this is not just one Planned Parenthood app; it is the visible part of a deeply rooted, and cleverly engineered, layer of Planned Parenthood-created entities.
Let’s look at the layers. Planned Parenthood currently offers the app in 27 states. In 10 of those states, the person ordering must have a telehealth meeting with a medical professional before getting the needed prescription for the birth control drug. That service is provided by Kaleido Health Solutions. KHS says it is a telehealth company that “exclusively provide(s) a telehealth solution for a national non-profit organization that is the leader in sexual and reproductive health care.” In other words, its only client is Planned Parenthood. This is not surprising, since KHS’ president & CEO, Jill Balderson, was, until 2017, vice president of Healthcare Innovation for Planned Parenthood Federation of America. As you go to order birth control products on the app, you find a disclaimer from KHS: “Kaleido Health Solutions and its affiliates do not manufacture these medications or hold any intellectual property rights in any of the brands listed, which belong to their respective owners.” While this is technically true, you may wonder who does manufacture and own the rights to the products.
That takes us to some other layers. You see, the rights to the birth control products are held by a company named Afaxys, Inc. Afaxys has three divisions: A pharmaceutical division to develop birth control products; a group purchasing organization to negotiate birth control prices; and an eMarketplace and Purchasing Portal, otherwise known as emapp®, that “is a procurement and purchasing program that enables online ordering, approval, and receiving.” Obviously, all three divisions of Afaxys are layers in this whole Planned Parenthood Direct app.
So, who is Afaxys? Well, Afaxys was created in 2008, and three of its cofounders were, or still are, connected with Planned Parenthood. The founding president and CEO of Afaxys was Ronda Dean, who worked for three years as vice president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Another cofounder was Sarah Stoesz, who was CEO of Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Christine Charbonneau, who is still CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and Hawaiian Islands as well as CEO of Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, was a cofounder of Afaxys and chair of Afaxys’ board of directors. In addition to the cofounders, other former Planned Parenthood people have positions with the company, and a number of Planned Parenthood affiliates have stock in Afaxys.
Thus, with a lot of details left out, from top to bottom, this Planned Parenthood Direct scheme has Planned Parenthood influencing every step—from the original purchasing interface to the pill manufacturer. The final revelation is that the only 10 birth control products you can purchase from this app are those that are manufactured by Afaxys.
It appears clear that the release of this new app is Planned Parenthood’s first effort to begin to get a major position in the birth control industry in the United States. According to industry estimates, that is a $7.6 billion industry today and will escalate to over $10 billion by the middle of the next decade. You can bet that Planned Parenthood is looking at those numbers and planning to get itself a significant portion of that market.
Remember, every one of the so-called “contraception” pills kills babies during the first 7-8 days of life by thinning the wall of the mother’s uterus, making it very difficult for the embryonic baby to implant. This causes his death prior to implantation.
As Planned Parenthood moves into this market more strongly, it will still be the largest baby killing organization in the country; we just won’t be able to count the growing number of dead human beings.
Jim Sedlak is executive director of American Life League, founder of STOPP International, and host of a weekly talk show on the Radio Maria Network. He’s been successfully fighting Planned Parenthood since 1985.