Planned Parenthood’s Endless Attack on Women’s Health

Opinion   |   Steve Aden   |   Jan 15, 2013   |   11:18AM   |   Washington, DC

Planned Parenthood makes it from one day to the next by telling themselves—and the world—that they exist for reasons pertaining to women’s health.

In fact, the nation’s largest abortion seller has turned “women’s health” into a mantra so ubiquitous that the words are used in nearly all of the organization’s various defenses for performing an abortion every 94 seconds, according to Planned Parenthood’s own newly released annual report. The hope is that pro-life individuals and groups will find themselves sufficiently defeated and crawl home.

But no matter how many times Planned Parenthood repeats their “Big Lie,” there’s a problem they can’t sweep under the rug with soothing rhetoric: taking life is not part of promoting health.

Paying for abortions with money intended for “health services” isn’t the same thing as promoting health, either. But this is what Planned Parenthood does under the guise of “women’s health.”

Now Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) is rightfully demanding that Planned Parenthood stop using your federal tax money and mine for abortions instead of the health services it claims to perform:

As Planned Parenthood’s federal funds reached an all time high, so too did the number of abortions it provided, while its real health services for women continues to decline…. Abortions make up 92 percent of Planned Parenthood’s pregnancy services, while prenatal care and adoption referrals account for less than 8 percent…. Planned Parenthood’s blatant misuse of taxpayer dollars to fund its big abortion business is an attack on life and women’s health.

To end what has been a seemingly endless supply of federal funds for Planned Parenthood, Black has re-introduced the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act (H.R. 217).

First introduced by former Congressman (now Indiana Governor) Mike Pence, this act “ensures that Title X family planning grants are used for their intended purpose and are prohibited from being used by organizations that provide abortions.”

H.R. 217 would stop the flow of our taxes for “assistance [for] an entity unless the entity certifies that, during the period of such assistance, the entity will not perform, and will not provide any funds to any other entity that performs, an abortion.”

This bill is critical just from a simple look at the numbers from 2011—numbers which show that Planned Parenthood received $542 million in taxpayer funds for 333,964 abortions.

That’s nearly 334,000 abortions in 2011 alone.

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According to Black,

H.R. 217 will clarify the original intent and spirit of the law, so that Title X federally funded grants will no longer be awarded to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the United States, or any other organization that abuses their privileges as health care providers and fails to protect life by providing abortions. It is long past time for Congress to respect the will of the American people and stop taxpayer funded abortions – a heinous abuse of the law and destruction of innocent life.

The Congresswoman is correct—Planned Parenthood is not furthering women’s health; it’s using American tax dollars to war against it—and it’s time we put a stop to it.

LifeNews.com Note: Steve Aden is the Senior Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom. This article originally appeared in Town Hall and is reprinted with permission.