By Suzanne Bowdey

Money is tight for everyone, it seems — except Planned Parenthood. While everyday Americans work and scrape, the country’s most lethal business is raking in record profits. And it’s no wonder, experts point out. The nation’s scandal-ridden abortion giant isn’t just killing unborn babies, it’s mutilating the teenagers it didn’t.

This twin business model — abortion and transgenderism — has been an extremely lucrative racket for Planned Parenthood, which has more than supplemented its lost revenue from the government in pricy cross-sex hormones. Now the second-largest U.S. network for “gender-affirming care,” the late Cecile Richards’s decision to expand into LGBT radicalism has more than cushioned the blow from the partial taxpayer defunding of the last year.

The group’s latest annual report was a doozy, shattering high-water marks for abortions (up 8% from the previous year’s numbers) to a jarring 434,450 in a single year. To most people’s surprise, the end of Roe v. Wade only made Planned Parenthood pivot away from surgical abortions to the dangerous abortion drug, which now accounts for at least 65% of unborn deaths.

But that isn’t the only way the chain is padding its bottom line. Buried in the small print of 50,411 “other procedures” is Planned Parenthood’s carefully concealed cash cow: transgender hormones. Even in small towns, the company’s tentacles are wrapped around the cross-sex drug craze, roping unsuspecting and confused children into a lifetime of dependence on chemicals that cause irreversible harm. Unlike an abortion, which is a single operation, this latest venture promises months — and even years — of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, and more injections. It’s exactly what Richards envisioned when she got in on the ground floor of the transgender craze in 2016: a new, never-ending stream of revenue.

And that stream is overflowing, according to Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee (CWLAC). After crunching what numbers were available, the nonprofit found that Planned Parenthood is enjoying a 40% spike in trans-related requests. Even that might be a conservative estimate, since the organization doesn’t release the stats from all of its regional offices. In the 14 reports that were available, “gender-affirming care,” “gender-affirming visits,” and “gender-affirming services” rocketed up by 544% in places like Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio. Thousands of people — many teenagers — flooded locations like Greater Washington, Northern Idaho, the Great Plains, Hawaii, and Western Pennsylvania.

The reasons for this new emphasis are easy enough to understand. Abortion pills at Planned Parenthood cost around $580, and the average price of a first-trimester surgical abortion is $600. Compare that to the hefty fee for five years of puberty blockers ($3,000-$25,000 per year), and it’s no wonder the transgender “industrial complex” is booming.

Unlike abortion, which technically can’t be bankrolled with taxpayer dollars under the Hyde Amendment (although Planned Parenthood has discovered plenty of loopholes), there’s no prohibition on taxpayer-funded gender “care.” That means the hundreds of millions of dollars Americans are unwillingly sending to Alexis McGill’s business for “health care” could be financing the transitions of countless children.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) made this painfully clear to Congress in his letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) late last month. Like FRC and other pro-lifers, the Missouri senator has been sounding the alarm that the one-year defunding of Planned Parenthood from the One Big Beautiful Bill is about to expire. And while the temporary blockade didn’t stop states from sending millions of dollars to the one-stop shop for abortion and trans radicalism, it has succeeded in taking a big bite ($700 million) out of its federal gravy train.

Pointing to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimate, Hawley explained that “Planned Parenthood alone received more than $1.5 billion in Medicare and Medicaid funds between 2019 and 2021.” Now, with this latest research from CWALC, he warns that the business is “positioned to supercharge its transgender agenda with taxpayer funding taken from the elderly and those in need,” demanding Johnson take action “without delay or hesitation.”

The Missourian, who’s openly fed up with the Trump administration’s inaction on mifepristone, has tried — unsuccessfully — to strip the dollars for abortion businesses from legislation, most recently in the skinny budget reconciliation. It failed 50-48, thanks in part to Republican Senators Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), who crossed over to vote with Democrats.

That only fired up Hawley more. “We need to take action,” he vented to reporters. “If leaders say, ‘Well, you know, it’s not going to be in this reconciliation bill,’ then I’d like to know what it’s going to be in, because it needs to be done before July.”

Adding to everyone’s frustration, the federal government’s multi-million-dollar gift to Planned Parenthood would be reinstated on America’s 250th birthday: July 4. The disturbing timing has only amplified the ferocious push to stop the country’s most sinister business from celebrating a huge windfall on the country’s major milestone. It’s an uneasy irony for a country founded on the pursuit of life and a happiness that never meant self-mutilation.

“Planned Parenthood is in the business of killing unborn children and sterilizing others, and they have been since the organization’s founding,” Family Research Council’s Mary Szoch told The Washington Stand. “Today, Planned Parenthood treats people in line with its founders’ vision. They provide abortion drugs to women,” she noted, “leaving them alone in their bathroom to deliver their visibly recognizable, dead unborn child into the toilet and to determine if their own immense bleeding is normal or life-threatening, and they provide ‘gender-affirming services,’ including ‘estrogen and anti-androgen hormone therapy; testosterone hormone therapy;’ and ‘puberty blockers’ that can sterilize teens with gender dysphoria.” Szoch paused before reiterating, “American taxpayers should not be forced to fund this titan of the culture of death and destruction.”

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

This article originally appeared here.