Ignoring the true barbarity of abortion, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee visited a Planned Parenthood on Monday to announce his support of the abortion chain and its taxpayer funding.
Afterward, Inslee called a Trump administration effort to defund abortion groups of tax dollars “barbarous” and promised to fight it, WBUR News reports.
“We will resist this rule with everything we have,” Inslee told NPR. “We will not be complicit with Donald Trump on this. This is a barbarous policy to prevent women from getting access to health care.”
On Monday, Inslee joined Govs. Kate Brown of Oregon and David Ige of Hawaii in promising to completely reject Title X family planning funds from the federal government if Trump moves forward with a new life-affirming program rule, Politico reports. If they follow through, the governors’ move could deny health care access to tens of thousands of low-income families in their states.
The “Protect Life Rule” rule simply would help ensure no Title X funds are used to support the killing of unborn babies. If enacted, the rule would defund Planned Parenthood of about $60 million annually or require it to completely separate its abortion business from its taxpayer-funded services. The abortion chain already has said it will not comply.
Inslee told abortion activists in Spokane that he will demand that the life-affirming proposal be withdrawn, KREM News 2 reports.
“There is no doubt the Trump Administration’s damaging proposal would weaponize the Title X program, undermine women’s health, and deny patients comprehensive, medically accurate information about their medical care,” the pro-abortion governor said. “It is nothing more than a domestic gag rule that has no place in Washington’s medical facilities.”
Click here to sign up for pro-life news alerts from LifeNews.com
He, Brown and Ige described the proposed rule as “unethical” because it would restrict funding to abortion groups, including Planned Parenthood.
Also on Monday, 13 pro-abortion state attorneys general sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, complaining about the proposed rule and threatening to sue if it goes into effect, according to the local news.
In their minds, defunding Planned Parenthood is barbaric and unethical, but the billion dollar abortion “nonprofit’s” practice of aborting more than 300,000 unborn babies every year is not.
The proposed Title X rule is not a “gag rule,” as abortion activists claim. It simply ensures that tax dollars are not being used to directly or indirectly fund the killing of unborn babies.
The United States spends about $260 million in Title X funds annually for family planning for low-income individuals, and Planned Parenthood is a huge recipient of those funds — as much as $50-$60 million annually.
The new HHS rule contains three important parts. The first prohibits recipients of taxpayer funds under Title X from referring women for abortions. The second requires abortion groups that receive funds to maintain completely separate facilities that do abortions. Because that is something Planned Parenthood refuses to do, it will no longer be eligible for Title X taxpayer funding.
The final section of the rule requires recipients of Title X dollars to ensure that they follow all state and local laws requiring reporting of child abuse. Interestingly, the Planned Parenthood abortion company repeatedly has run afoul of such laws by refusing to report cases of child abuse or rape to law enforcement officials after killing the babies of young teenage girls in abortions.
It is modeled after similar Reagan administration rules that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in Rust v. Sullivan in 1991.
The rule has not gone into effect yet. The government recently wrapped up a public comment period on July 31.
