Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts Will Cut Off All Taxpayer Funding for Planned Parenthood

State   |   Micaiah Bilger   |   Jan 9, 2018   |   6:21PM   |   Lincoln, Nebraska

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts plans to cut off taxpayer funding to abortion groups in his state this year after previous efforts stalled.

KMTV News Now reports the governor’s budget proposal would revise the way Title X funds are distributed and disqualify groups that provide abortions. Ricketts, who is pro-life, announced the plan this week ahead of his proposed budget.

“Nebraska is a pro-life state, and the state’s budget should reflect those values,” Ricketts said. “This year, I am recommending that the legislature revise the state’s distribution of federal Title X healthcare funds to ensure that no funds are used to subsidize abortion. Thanks to action by Congress, Nebraska can now take new steps to protect unborn life by ensuring that these dollars are not used to fund abortion.”

What Ricketts was referring to was a law signed by President Donald Trump that makes it easier for states to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups. The law overturned a rule by pro-abortion President Barack Obama forcing states to fund abortion groups.

In recent years, several states have opted to direct Title X family planning grants to county health departments, community health centers and other types of providers, in preference to organizations engaged in objectionable activities such as Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion business in America.

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The Omaha World Herald reports more:

The governor attempted a similar change last year.

His budget proposal included language that would have steered Nebraska’s $1.9 million annual share of federal Title X funds to entities that offer a broad range of health services.

The provision would have effectively cut off Title X funding from Planned Parenthood of the Heartland and three independent health clinics based in Tecumseh, Grand Island and North Platte. Planned Parenthood has clinics in Omaha and Lincoln.

Those clinics collect 50 percent of the state’s Title X funds, which pay for contraceptives, cervical cancer screening, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases and related services to low-income women and men.

State lawmakers later took out the language from the budget.

In 2015, a Nebraska newspaper reported that Planned Parenthood receives as much as $90,000 in taxpayer funding per year from Nebraska. It found that taxpayer funding accounts for 11-18 percent of the total funds for the abortion giant in the state.

The money would be redistributed to community health centers that provide more comprehensive health care but not abortions. At the national level, a recent survey found that community health centers not only provide more comprehensive health care than Planned Parenthood, excluding abortions, they also outnumber the abortion group’s facilities by 20 to one.