If you’re an environmentalist, you should be upset about the sequester. If you’re an advocate for children with special needs, get angry. And if you’ve got family serving overseas, you should be especially upset. Why? For some reasons you may not have thought about yet.
When it comes to the latest round of budget cuts, there’s one big problem that should bother everyone: Washington’s continued funding of Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion chain.
First, the facts: Each year, Planned Parenthood receives hundreds of millions of dollars from you, the taxpayer — and the total is rising. This past year, Planned Parenthood got $542 million from the government (i.e., from you and me), which accounts for almost half (45%) of the abortion chain’s budget. Abortions at Planned Parenthood are rising, while other services are falling. And Planned Parenthood recently mandated that all of its affiliates perform abortions, causing at least one affiliate to sever ties with America’s abortion boss.
All this says nothing of the fact that Planned Parenthood is flush with cash, having reported excess revenue of $87.4 million and $1.2 billion in total assets last year. Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s CEO, makes nearly $400,000 a year. And yet the biggest abortion provider in America somehow still calls itself a non-profit.
And what does Planned Parenthood do with this money? The spokespeople for Big Abortion will tell you that there’s no way for public money to go toward abortion, but this is an outright lie. We know that money is fungible; the rent, the staff, the utilities — all of which support abortion procedures, no matter how indirectly — are propped up with our money. Whether we want to or not, we’re all forced to fund the taking of innocent human lives for profit.
Just before the sequester passed, the White House released a document detailing exactly what would get cut. It’s a great resource, and we all should use it to ask some questions.
For example, if you care about the environment and maintaining the natural beauty of our country, you might ask: Why did the National Park Service lose $153 million, while Planned Parenthood continues to deprive innocent human beings of the chance to live on my dime? If we defunded Planned Parenthood, the National Park Service wouldn’t have to lose a single cent.
If you have a child with special needs, you might ask: Why was $633 million stripped from the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services, while Planned Parenthood gets to keep $542 million to abort pre-born children? Does our government really want to prioritize killing special-needs kids before birth over taking care of them?
If you’re devoted to our troops and our military, you might ask: How could the government take hundreds of billions of dollars away from the Department of Defense, all the while insisting that we fund against our will such violence against children in the womb?
The $542 million we’re forced to pay Planned Parenthood could have refunded the National Science Foundation ($361 million cut). That could have been over a dozen research projects to make our energy sources cleaner, cheaper, and more efficient. It could have replenished the Fish and Wildlife Service ($127 million). That’s 25 species in California alone put at risk of being completely wiped out. It could fund necessary training for hundreds of our men and women in uniform, and ensure that our family and friends protecting us abroad have well-maintained equipment that protects them.
Or it could come back to us, the taxpayers, to be spent as we, as individuals, see fit — on crisis pregnancy centers, on homeless shelters, on churches or charitable foundations or our own family members. But instead, our money is aborting pre-born children — hundreds every day. Over 300,000 a year.
No matter where you’d like to see these hundreds of millions go, there’s no disputing that there are better uses for them than Planned Parenthood — better uses than for a gigantic abortion chain that covers up the sexual abuse of vulnerable young girls, assists the brutal sex-trafficking industry, lies to women and hurts them physically, advertises services it doesn’t provide, and facilitates abortions based on race or sex.
There are ways to care for our women and children — safe, effective, and loving ways. Planned Parenthood is none of these. Tax season is already tough enough on American families. Let’s not make tax money blood money.
Lila Rose is the president of Live Action, a non-profit pro-life organization, and the founder of the nation’s largest pro-life student magazine, The Advocate.