As result, Planned Parenthood’s customer base—poor, urban, and disproportionately minority—experiences a high rate of unplanned pregnancies and abortions.

But Planned Parenthood receives half a billion dollars every year—half its revenues—from two government programs, Medicaid and Title X, as very few Planned Parenthood customers have private insurance coverage. Because the vast majority of this funding aims to provide birth control to low-income women, Planned Parenthood needs a scapegoat for the high unplanned births among its customer base. Enter the IUD.

The greatest beneficiary of OTC birth control would be uninsured women, who face an incredibly high rate of unplanned pregnancies and abortions because of Planned Parenthood. If the birth-control pill were available OTC, Planned Parenthood’s power over this market would be reduced, as poor women would no longer be forced to frequent Planned Parenthood in order to access the birth control pill. So Planned Parenthood trashes the Gardner-Ayotte proposal because it would actually help poor uninsured women gain contraceptive access, while it praises the Senate Democrats’ bill that accomplishes nothing. This protects its business model.