Via Media Blog, I’m almost disappointed. What happened to their usual talking point that they don’t use federal funds for abortions but only for their other services — which, of course, frees up money from other sources that would have gone towards those other services for more abortions instead? We’re five and a half hours from shutting down the federal government partly because of a standoff over PP’s abortion practice, yet you’d have not the slightest inkling of it from what you’re about to see. There’s not even a euphemism, like “population control” or something about “inconveniences.” Too bad.

Ezra Klein reminded WaPo’s readers this afternoon that “only” three percent or so of PP’s overall funding goes to abortions. Here’s what that means in human terms:

Planned Parenthood performed 332,278 abortions in the United States in 2009, according to a fact sheet the group published last month.

That is about as many as the 333,012 people who lived in the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, in 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

The 332,278 abortions Planned Parenthood performed over the 365 days of 2009 equals an average of 910 lives terminated per day–or about 38 per hour, or one every 95 seconds.

Two questions for you as you watch Scarlett Johansson ignore the giant elephant in the room. One: If Klein’s right that abortion is an insignificant little nothing in the grand scheme of Planned Parenthood’s “business,” why don’t they drop the service? Stick with contraception and cancer screening, etc, and they’ll never have to worry about funding again, Pelosi’s latest insane demagoguery notwithstanding. And two: As I said to one of our trolls who was whining about this in Headlines, I thought a core principle of true “choice” warriors was that there’s nothing to be ashamed of in defending abortion. On the contrary, we’re told, we should celebrate the fact that we live in a country so “evolved” that abortion is not only widely available, it’s actually a constitutional right. Okay, then, why isn’t PP celebrating it? Where’s Scarlett’s “Say it loud, we abort and we’re proud” battle cry on PP’s behalf? Mystifying.

Update: My apologies: I’d completely forgotten Ed’s post about Abby Johnson and the true volume of abortion services at PP. According to Johnson, it’s not three percent of their “business.” It’s more like 12 percent.