Seattle Storm First Pro Team to Partner with Planned Parenthood

WNBA champions the Seattle Storm is the first professional sports team to announce a partnership with Planned Parenthood.

The club will launch its partnership with the nation’s largest abortion provider on July 18, at its Stand with Planned Parenthood event, when it hosts the Chicago Sky during its only nationally televised game at the KeyArena in Seattle, reports the Guardian.

The special event will include a rally prior to the game and a silent auction. The team has pledged to donate five dollars of every ticket purchased to the abortion industry giant’s affiliate, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands.

“We are thrilled about this first-of-its-kind partnership,” said Christine Charbonneau, CEO of the affiliate, reports ESPN. “The Seattle Storm owners made a decision to publicly support Planned Parenthood, making them the first professional sports team to make their voice heard and their stance known.”

Storm co-owner Dawn Trudeau said Planned Parenthood has allowed many to enjoy “the freedom to chart the course of their own lives in directions that may not otherwise have been possible.”

“As individual Americans who are not legislators, merely citizens, we have felt hamstrung by our limited ability to make a meaningful impact in the national health care debate,” Trudeau also said. “Access to affordable, quality health care, including a full range of reproductive care, is a critical precondition for anyone – especially girls and women, to pursue their dreams and grow into their best selves.”

Planned Parenthood has been the subject of increasing controversy in the country after a series of undercover videos led to allegations the group sells the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics for a profit.

The organization has been the subject of multiple congressional investigations. Both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Select Investigative Panel have referred Planned Parenthood Federation of America, several of the largest Planned Parenthood affiliates in the country, and three of their business associates in the fetal tissue procurement industry to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice for criminal prosecution.

Though the Guttmacher Institute reported in January that the number of abortions performed in the United States has dropped to its lowest level since 1974, Planned Parenthood reports an increase of 4,349 abortions – from 323,999 in 2014-2015, to 328,348 abortions in 2015-2016 – in its recently released annual report.

According to the organization itself, its total number of patients has dropped since last year. In its 2014-2015 report, that number was given as 2.5 million, while the latest report gives the number of patients seen as 2.4 million.

Planned Parenthood also reported 2,945,059 contraception services in 2014-2015, and 2,808,815 of the same services in its latest report, a drop of 136,244 within a year.

Similarly, the group reports 9,419 prenatal services in its latest report, a significant drop since a year ago, when the group claimed 17,419 of the same services.

In 2014-2015, Planned Parenthood reported having performed 682,208 cancer screening and prevention services. However, in 2015-2016, it reports 665,234 of the same services, a drop of 16,974.

Despite the decline in many of its non-abortion services, Planned Parenthood’s annual report shows that revenue is up.

The group’s total revenue is reported to be $1,354.3 million in 2015-2016, an increase over the $1,296.1 million reported in 2014-2015. The organization shows an increase in government reimbursement and grants this year, reporting $554.6 million in taxpayer funding, while in 2014-2015 it reported $553.7 million.

Planned Parenthood also reported a profit of $58.8 million in 2014-2015. That amount rose to $77.5 million this past year.

“Planned Parenthood’s newly released 2015-2016 annual report reveals that abortion continues to be a big business for the nation’s number one abortion chain, as taxpayer funding rises and other services continue their downward trend,” said Americans United for Life’s president and CEO Catherine Glenn Foster.