Polling consistently shows a strong majority of Americans–about 6 out of 10–rejecting taxpayer funding of abortion. It is only common sense that the Trump administration has started to make good on the President’s campaign promises and repealed the Obama-era rule that forced states to spend taxpayer dollars to prop up Big Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood is the biggest abortion business in the country, accounting for over a third of the nation’s 926,000-procedures-a-year abortion market. Yet Planned Parenthood receives $550 million in taxpayer subsidies every year, and in the last election cycle funneled $30 million to the most extreme pro-abortion candidates.
Meanwhile, mainstream Federally-Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) that provide far broader, full-spectrum healthcare services–without abortion–outnumber Planned Parenthood clinics by over 20 to 1. The only reason for the government to continue funding Planned Parenthood is to force taxpayers to prop up Planned Parenthood’s monster abortion business.
Planned Parenthood wants the public to believe it is a normal, mainstream healthcare provider whose abortion business is somehow a negligible part of its operations. The New York Times reports that the Trump administration called Planned Parenthood’s bluff, offering even more taxpayer funding for real healthcare services if Planned Parenthood would terminate its abortion program. Planned Parenthood rejected the offer completely, and has now shown its true colors by placing its massive abortion business over and above all other considerations.
Planned Parenthood’s allies in politics and the establishment media have become adept at repeating their reality-challenged talking point that taxpayer funds somehow “do not pay for abortions” at Planned Parenthood. Their familiarity with this new false mantra is impressive, considering just six months ago they were clamoring for more taxpayer funding of abortion.
But the fact is, taxpayers are directly footing the bill for abortions in states like California, where Medicaid pays even for elective abortions. Moreover, as Planned Parenthood commits nearly 900 abortions every day across the country, it uses its massive taxpayer subsidies to prop up its clinical and corporate infrastructure, which is run by some of the most radical abortion doctors in the country.
The problem of forcing pro-life Americans to subsidize Planned Parenthood is more than just simple “fungibility”–it’s that abortion is as endemic to Planned Parenthood’s composition as salt is to the ocean.
This past winter, the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Select Investigative Panel each released extensive, meticulously-documented final reports after over a year of conducting nationwide, comprehensive investigations of Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry’s participation in the harvesting and sale of fetal body parts. Both the House and Senate investigations referred Planned Parenthood Federation of America, four of the biggest Planned Parenthood affiliates, and their business partners to the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice for further investigation and criminal prosecution.
Who can forget the video footage of Planned Parenthood’s national Senior Director of Medical Services callously negotiating the harvesting and sale of tiny baby hearts, lungs, livers, and brains over wine and salad? “A lot of people want intact hearts these days,” she said. “I was like wow, I didn’t even know. Good for them.”
Planned Parenthood and their political cronies certainly cannot forget those videos. That’s probably why, as the evidence gathered in the most extensive investigations finally makes its way to an administration willing to listen, as Congress again sets to work on pro-life healthcare reform to defund Planned Parenthood after the Easter recess, Planned Parenthood’s bought-and-paid-for Attorney General in California, Xavier Becerra, brought 15 bogus charges against me, all based on recording the videotapes.
The charges are based on an absurd and politically-selective reading of California recording law, which bars recording “confidential communications” but does not include those held in public areas or those able to be overheard. Even Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, admitted under oath that the recording took place in a “non-confidential area.” Planned Parenthood’s latest weaponized litigation will serve only to highlight again the shocking footage and the incriminating admissions made on it by Planned Parenthood leadership. I’m not worried about the result in the courtroom–but Planned Parenthood should be.
The American abortion industry, led by Planned Parenthood, is hanging by a thread. Planned Parenthood and their allies’ increasingly insistent advocacy for the most extreme policies–abortion anytime, anywhere, for any reason, paid for by the government and with the baby’s body parts sold afterward–is now crashing headlong into the reality that the majority of Americans oppose the vast majority of elective abortions on which the brutal industry thrives.
David Daleiden is the founder and project lead at The Center for Medical Progress, who filmed the undercover videos of Planned Parenthood’s senior leadership discussing the harvesting and sale of aborted fetal organs and tissues.