Last Friday, for the first time ever, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to federally defund the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood.
As you may know, Planned Parenthood receives over $350 million each year from us, the taxpayers. The organization claims that the money it receives from the federal government does not go to pay for abortions.
While it would be illegal for Planned Parenthood to pay for abortions with federal taxpayer money, believe me — our money is still propping up this abortion giant. It’s an interesting bookkeeping game, as our taxpayer money pays for Planned Parenthood’s staff, facilities, and equipment — just not the actual abortion procedures.
In the past decade, Students for Life and other activists like Lila Rose, President of Live Action and a former SFLA intern, have worked to prove to Americans that Planned Parenthood should not receive our money to kill and wound over 300,000 preborn children and women each year.
— In 2002, an activist with Life Dynamics called 813 Planned Parenthood and National Abortion Federation abortion facilities posing as a 13-year-old girl pregnant by a 22-year-old man and said she wanted an abortion. She found that 91% of the abortion facilities agreed to cover up the statutory rape and perform the abortion without reporting the rape.
— In 2007, a Kansas district attorney filed 107 criminal charges against the federally funded Planned Parenthood in Overland Park, Kansas, for performing and covering up illegal late-term abortions, 23 of which were felonies.
— In 2008, Live Action released audio of Planned Parenthood workers in several states accepting donations for the abortion of “black babies only” from an actor posing as a racist.
— In the summer of 2008, Students for Life launched the “Defund Planned Parenthood Campaign,” uniting black pro-life leaders and organizing four national press conferences highlighting the Live Action videos and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s racist agenda for the organization. (See the SFLA Planned Parenthood racism study.)
— In 2008, both Students for Life and Live Action released undercover footage of Planned Parenthood facilities willing to cover up the statutory rape of minor girls. Please note that these are not isolated incidents, as actual lawsuits have been popping up across the nation against Planned Parenthood facilities for covering up the abuse of minor girls.
— In 2008, Students for Life released an undercover video of an employee of a federally funded Planned Parenthood facility explaining to a woman that she can abort her child only by birthing him alive and letting him die.
— In 2009, Live Action released video footage of Planned Parenthoods giving false medical information to women about what abortion really is and the development of their preborn child.
— In January of 2011, Live Action released seven shocking videos shot at different Planned Parenthood facilities — including some facilities that receive direct federal funds — that showed Planned Parenthood employees aiding actors who were posing as human sex traffickers. In some of the footage, the Planned Parenthood workers even offer suggestions as to how the traffickers can skirt the law and get contraception and abortions for underage girls and how the girls can continue to work immediately after their abortions.
Defunding Planned Parenthood is at the top of our list as pro-lifers. For if we can defeat this organization, we will be able to bring down the largest abortion provider in America, stop Planned Parenthood’s preying on young women, and save hundreds of thousands of preborn lives.
As shown in the above points, Planned Parenthood is not about protecting young girls — instead it uses young women for profit. Abortion = big profits for Planned Parenthood. So much so that in 2010, Planned Parenthood issued a mandate that all Planned Parenthood facilities must become abortion providers by 2015.
Last week, I was honored to participate in the Expose Planned Parenthood Coalition’s Washington, D.C. Vigil for the Victims in front of the D.C. Planned Parenthood headquarters. I was there with other pro-life leaders to take a stand and ask Congress to federally defund Planned Parenthood.
While I was speaking, it all hit me: 2011 will be the year we note in the history books as the year legalized abortion began to end in America, when the abortion Goliath, Planned Parenthood, was defeated.
Things are starting to fall into place, now it’s up to the Senate to take a stand and pass the Defund Planned Parenthood Amendment.
Kristan Hawkins is the Executive Director of Students for Life of America. Learn more at www.medSFL.org.
