Like some pro-life voters, Susan B, Anthony List president Marjorie Danenfelser has had enough. She’s tired of listening to Donald Trump, who had ostensibly run a reliably pro-life campaign up until recently, praise the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
As LifeNews has chronicled, Trump spent months last year making it clear he is pro-life, opposes abortion and would support defunding the Planned parenthood abortion business. Them Trump began saying, over the last few months, that the abortion company does “good things,” even “wonderful things” for “millions of women.” While maintaining that he would defnud Planned Parenthood if it doesn’t get out of the abortion business, Trump began holding up the parts of the abortion company he things are defensible — even beneficial.
Trump went further on Tuesday night and attacked pro-life voters who have been upset by his comments praising Planned Parenthood.
Trump dismissed the notion he is not a true conservative because he supports Planned Parenthood, insisting he is “just doing what’s right.”
“Look, Planned Parenthood has done very good work for many, many — for millions of women,” Trump said in a news conference Tuesday night. “And I’ll say it, and I know a lot of the so-called conservatives, they say that’s really … cause I’m a conservative, but I’m a common-sense conservative.”
Trump said he would not fund Planned Parenthood “as long as you have the abortion going on,” but noted the “millions of people — and I’ve had thousands of letters from women — that have been helped.”
“And this wasn’t a set-up. This was women writing letters. But I’m going to be really good for women, I’m going to be good for women’s health issues, it’s very important to me. Very important to me,” he said.
Now, in an email to LifeNews, Dannenfelser, who heads a political group promoting pro-life candidates, says Trump needs to stop. While asserting that Trump does have pro-life positions on key abortion issues, the SBA List president said Trump should stop pumping up the abortion company.
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“Mr. Trump has repeatedly said that, as President, he will defund Planned Parenthood so long as they continue to do abortions. We applaud him for this stand, but ask that he reconsider his repeated assertion that the group does ‘wonderful things’ beyond abortion. According to the group’s own annual reports, this could not be further from the truth. Planned Parenthood is a profit–driven, abortion-centered business – and a bad investment for taxpayers,” she said.
Dannenfelser continued: “A new Center for Medical Progress video released this week showed once again that Planned Parenthood’s highest executives are willing to engage in the harvest and sale of the body parts of aborted children. We ask Mr. Trump to watch this video series and urgently take off the rose-colored glasses he wears when talking about Planned Parenthood. Mr. Trump’s silence on this horror at the core of Planned Parenthood needs to end.”
At the same time Dannenfelser asked Trump to quit propping up Planned Parenthood, she also took the liberal media to task — specifically Rolling Stone, which ran an article claiming Trump is “running over the pro-life movement.”
Dannenfelser said: “Rolling Stone got it wrong. We may not like everything he says, but Donald Trump has committed to the pro-life movement’s top legislative priorities of stopping brutal, late-term abortions after five months and to defunding Planned Parenthood. Ms. Posner’s assertion that Trump is running over the pro-life movement is simply untrue and ignores the work we have put in to ensure every GOP presidential candidate is committed to our pro-life agenda.”
During Saturday night’s Republican presidential debate, Trump repeated a line that has had pro-life people concerned about his stance on taxpayer funding of the Planned Parenthood abortion company.
Though he repeated his line about supporting de-funding and opposing the abortion component of Planned Parenthood, Trump continued defending the abortion company in the most recent Republican presidential debate.
Trump stood firm in his defense of Planned Parenthood’s very few services other than abortion during Thursday night’s CNN Republican debate.
“I am pro-life, I am totally against abortion having to do with Planned Parenthood, but millions and millions of women, [with] cervical cancer, breast cancer, are helped by Planned Parenthood,” Trump said in the face of criticism from his rivals.
“You can say whatever you want, but they have millions of women going through Planned Parenthood who are helped greatly. I wouldn’t fund it, I’d defund it because of the abortion factor,” he added.
Recently, in what may be the last straw for some pro-life voters who support Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate once again defended his positive comments concerning the Planned Parenthood abortion business. In an interview on Meet the Press, Trump said that the women he knows who have gone to the abortion company understand it better than anyone else.
“I have many, many friends who are women who understand Planned Parenthood better than you or I will ever understand it,” Trump told Chuck Todd, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” in an interview. “And they do some very good work. Cervical cancer, lots of women’s issue, women’s health issues are taken care of.”
Trump continues to claim that he opposes abortion and the abortion component of the Planned Parenthood abortion business and maintains he opposes federal taxpayer funding of the billion-dollar corporation.
“Planned Parenthood does a really good job at a lot of different areas. But not on abortion,” he said Sunday. “So I’m not going to fund it if it’s doing the abortion. I am not going to fund it.”
In February, for the first time, Trump has specifically promised he would sign a bill as president to de-fund Planned Parenthood. Trump has repeatedly indicated he opposes Planned Parenthood funding but has always stopped short of committing to sign legislation to stop the flow of taxpayer funds to the nation’s biggest abortion business.
In a new interview with David Brody of CBN, Trump made that promise. Although his promise will go a long way towards reassuring pro-life voters he would implement specific pro-life policy on abortion as president, Trump continued to praise Planned Parenthood — following up on his “good things” and “wonderful work” comments that have turned off some pro-life voters.
Meanwhile, Trump said he thinks the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case that ushered in an era of 48 million abortions was “wrongly decided.” Trump said he would appoint “very good judges” who would ultimately “change it” but he opposed Roe without specifically saying it should be overturned.
