Nebraska lawmakers are scheduled to debate a new budget this week that would defund abortion groups of taxpayer dollars.
The measure is part of pro-life Gov. Pete Ricketts’ proposed budget, revising the way Title X funds are distributed to disqualify Planned Parenthood and other groups that provide abortions.
The funding bill passed the Senate Appropriations Committee last week, and the full Senate is expected to begin debating the bill Tuesday, the Omaha World-Herald reports.
Ricketts said the bill only stops abortion providers from receiving taxpayer funds through Title X; any other group can qualify.
“Nebraska is a pro-life state, so our budget should reflect our values. Any organization can have access to these dollars as long as they don’t provide abortions,” he told KOLN News.
The abortion chain Planned Parenthood already is complaining about the proposal.
“It’s a really big shame that the governor is being so shortsighted and taking people’s healthcare and politicizing it in this way,” said Meg Mikolaczyk, a Nebraska spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood.
Lawmakers told the news outlet the legislation is contentious. Previous efforts to defund the abortion chain in Nebraska stalled.
In 2015, a Nebraska newspaper reported Planned Parenthood receives as much as $90,000 in taxpayer funding per year from the state. It found that taxpayer funding accounts for 11-18 percent of the abortion chain’s total funds in the state.
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“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,” Ricketts said earlier this year.
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.
If the legislation passes, the tax dollars would be redistributed to community health centers that provide more comprehensive health care but not abortions. At the national level, one 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.
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion chain in America, destroying the lives of about 320,000 unborn babies every year.
