The issues discussed in the 2016 presidential election had no shortage of controversial and diverse viewpoints from both the political left and the political right, ranging from immigration laws to gender issues to the economy. In the election, one voice was influential in advocacy but did not quite sweep away the political spotlight as did other influential figures: Planned Parenthood. Typically, when Democrats and Republicans focus in on the argument over funding PP, they do so with abortion strictly in mind. This article, however, has nothing to do with the moral implications of abortion procedures. Rather, the main focus is where America should be sending its health care funding in light of the strict facts.

If you support Planned Parenthood, you have undoubtedly said something along the lines of, “Without Planned Parenthood, many of these patients wouldn’t get the health care they need to take control of their lives.” Actually, that line is straight from PP itself. The company has no shortage of these eloquent sayings, painting itself as the hero of millions. In fact, 2.5 million men and women in the U.S. visit PP every year. They must be providing great services, right?

Not according to many former Planned Parenthood workers. Over the past several years, numerous managers and employees have “come out” with their own experiences working at the company; women like Abby Johnson, Sue Thayer and Ramona Treviño, some of whom have reported feeling more like salespeople than health care employees while working at PP. Most of them have claimed that their former employers often enforced abortion quotas, which may or may not be morally wrong in some people’s opinions. However, with a lack of prenatal or adoption quotas, many would argue that the company is more focused on profits made from abortions than with providing quality health care if such claims are true. While a good number of these former employees have experienced their own “conversions” to the pro-life side, the former workers are still able to provide facts that do not deal with the morality of abortion, but rather with the morality of the company’s own actions.

“There’s not a Planned Parenthood in the country who’s ever done a mammogram,” said former PP manager Sue Thayer, who has testified before Congress against the company for her views of their actions. “That’s just one example of what they say they do to help women, but they’ve never ever done that. It’s the same with prenatal care and adoption and all these things that women need.”

The source FactCheck.org confirms that Planned Parenthood does not provide mammogram tests and can only refer women to other places that can do the tests. Multiple customers have also agreed with Thayer on this point; despite how Planned Parenthood emphasizes “family planning,” many women aren’t able to find extensive help at the health center if they want to continue their pregnancy. The Planned Parenthood website has a section titled “Prenatal Care,” which does include information over the lifestyle of a pregnant woman and a detailed description of what an ultrasound is. However, the website offers no confidence that PP establishments can provide such services, only listing that health care providers can check for STIs at any moment in time, perform routine breast exams and PAP tests, record your weight, test your urine for any possible diseases and possibly monitor the growth of the fetus. For extensive prenatal care, women may be referred to a different health care provider, although some customers claim that PP couldn’t even offer them referrals.

So if Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide prenatal care, what “family planning” does it provide? Well, it stays mostly in the range of providing abortion services, STI testing, contraceptives, pregnancy tests and some one-on-one talks with an employee. Most of us would agree that providing free health care services is beneficial to American communities, but funding Planned Parenthood is not the best way to provide said services. Utilizing statistics from sources such as the Guttmacher Institute, The MammaCare Foundation, the U.S. Census Bureau and the CDC, Live Action calculated that Planned Parenthood only performs 0.97 percent of the nation’s reported PAP tests and only 1.8 percent of its breast exams, and even when it does provide these services, PP can only refer women to other hospitals if results come back irregular. Furthermore, testing done by Consumer Reports rated two condom brands from Planned Parenthood as the lowest quality out of all the brands they tested, claiming that the condoms were easily susceptible to breaking and urging Planned Parenthood to tell its customers to not use them. Former managers were quick to claim that PP provided low-quality condoms on purpose in order to increase possible abortion clients, but Planned Parenthood denied it.

Aside from providing a couple of questionable services, Planned Parenthood has used sneaky business tactics when providing statistics to the public. A frequent statistic cited by PP supporters is that abortion is only 3 percent of the services provided; a statistic that many are beginning to denounce as misleading, including the Washington Post. In 2014, Planned Parenthood provided 323,999 abortions. As any Integrated Math II student might be able to figure out, divide that number by PP’s 2.5 million customers and you find that 13 percent, or roughly 1 in every 8 customers, that receive any services from Planned Parenthood also receive an abortion, which is not the same as PP’s reported 1 in 33 people. To arrive at the misleading 3 percent number, according to the Washington Post, the company provides statistics based on counting how much of each individual service is provided instead of providing these numbers juxtaposed to the number of customers that it helps annually. It also loosely defines a service as any “discrete clinical interaction.” For example, if one woman received a $10 pregnancy test and an abortion, which ranges from $390 to $1,500, then abortion would be considered only half of the services provided, even though 100 percent of the customers, or one woman in this example, received an abortion. This faulty system weighs two clearly unequal services the same, and whether you believe abortion is morally right or wrong, you must consider the implications of PP’s sneakiness; if the company is so proud of providing women this service, why does it try to hide the reality of how many women actually receive an abortion? If a tactic like this was employed by any other major business, the public backlash would be quick and painful. People don’t like being deceived.

As has been established, PP does not provide very many diverse health care options. Unfortunately, there are several other unfortunate circumstances that warrant sending federal funds elsewhere. In 2011, eight Planned Parenthood staffers were recorded willingly aiding child sex traffickers, who, according to a TIME article, were later identified as pro-life advocates who wanted to test the company and see how employees would react to such a situation. In a rushed apology, PP immediately promised to retrain employees so that they would know how to handle any such situations in the future. Former manager Ramona Treviño worked at Planned Parenthood at the time of the scandal and recalled her experience in an interview with Live Action.

“I went in really believing that Planned Parenthood could redeem themselves,” Treviño said. “[During the session] they began to play all of the previous undercover investigations that had been put out about Planned Parenthood, and I became very perplexed. I raised my hand and said, ‘I’m confused. When are we going to actually begin the retraining?’ … She [the woman in charge] immediately shot me down and she said, ‘We’re not here to talk about that, Ramona. We are here to teach you how to identify if you’re being videotaped or recorded or entrapped in any way.’ At that moment, my heart just sunk… That experience left me so disgusted that I couldn’t see how Planned Parenthood could redeem themselves.”

Fortunately, one of the women caught on video was fired by Planned Parenthood management for her inappropriate actions. However, any scandal where employees would be willing to aid and abet supposed child sex traffickers would easily be enough to bring down any major business or political figure, but Planned Parenthood received limited media coverage over the incident. Not only this, but minor claims by former employees of Planned Parenthood performing abortion procedures blind and that some abortion-related complications are not legally necessary to report have not been investigated thoroughly enough. These matters should not be so easily dismissed, especially by those of us who claim to work for equality and want the American public to be safe.

For many people, Planned Parenthood has been a huge role model in the advocacy for women’s rights and morally-sound political ideals. It is extremely difficult to attack any organization with seemingly well-intended actions; it is an experience similar to finding out how chicken nuggets are made — they taste amazing, but the process behind them isn’t the greatest. But if Planned Parenthood is defunded, what happens to the millions of low-income Americans that need health care? Planned Parenthood has been very effective in scaring the public into thinking that people will suffer if they aren’t around. However, the Center for Healthcare Research & Transformation shows that Federally Qualified Health Centers and other look-alike centers reached 8,000 locations across the U.S. in 2011, compared to Planned Parenthood’s 650 locations. Federally Qualified Health Centers also help over 20 million patients annually, compared to Planned Parenthood’s 2.5 million, and provide higher-quality and more diverse services than those given at PP locations. The Rural Health Information Hub reports that FQHCs are also required to establish a sliding discount fee program and other similar qualifications in order to better aid the lower class.

As critics will point out, some Planned Parenthood locations are in more poor neighborhoods. According to the Guttmacher Institute, out of the 3,142 counties in the United States, 103 of the 491 counties where PP exists lack another FQHC in that area. It would clearly be extremely foolish to pull the rug out from Planned Parenthood and leave these communities without STI testing, contraceptives, and other basic reproductive health care needs. As Dr. Stephanie Taylor of the State Office of Public Health in Louisiana said in a New York Times interview, “You can’t just cut Planned Parenthood off one day and expect everyone across the city [New Orleans] to absorb the patients. There needs to be time to build the capacity.” With this in mind, the primary goal before defunding Planned Parenthood should be constructing and renovating government-based health centers in these communities so that Americans don’t have to experience losing basic reproductive health care service. After these FQHCs are established, health care will be more diverse and beneficial to our American communities.

Reiterating, this is not an argument to defund Planned Parenthood for tax breaks or retaliate against abortion. I believe that if Planned Parenthood lacks diverse services, then our government should stop supporting it and instead send that money into places where it will be most beneficial to Americans. In addition, if Planned Parenthood employees have acted with corrupt intentions, that behavior should be recognized as inappropriate. Our federal tax funding should be poured into government health centers that are more clearly focused on aiding Americans, and the reported 60 percent of Planned Parenthood funding that comes from private donors, coupled with abortion profits, will be enough to keep their abortion services running.