Orange County, California Supervisors Restore $300K Planned Parenthood Grant
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 29, 2009
Santa Ana, CA (LifeNews.com) — The Orange County Board of Supervisors in southern California has restored the $300,000 grant it initially revoked from the Planned Parenthood abortion business in March. The board initially voted to suspend the grant for family planning services because Planned Parenthood does abortions.
After hearing from county attorneys, supervisors restored the grant on Tuesday, but they also approved a policy that would make future grants to the abortion business more difficult to obtain.
Supervisor John Moorlach, who first proposed cutting the Planned Parenthood grant, and Supervisor Bill Campbell voted against restoring the funding.
Supervisors voted to create a new policy that, among other provisions, makes it so the family planning services can’t be provided in the same location as abortions. That would require Planned Parenthood to establish a new facility that solely provided the contraception the grant funds.
The new policy also restricts funds to direct health services, rather than health education — such as the propaganda Planned Parenthood will provide area teenagers — with the $300,000.
Jon Dunn, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Orange and San Bernardino Counties, complained to the Los Angles Times about the new policy.
"Clearly this is an effort to target Planned Parenthood," he said. "It’s much more costly to treat people once they have a symptom than to provide them with the information they need to prevent an infection from occurring."
Dunn said the policy wouldn’t stop the abortion business from applying for a grant next year.
The board took a unanimous vote last month to stop the funding.
"I personally have a problem with government funding of an organization that provides abortion services," Moorlach said at the time.
"When Orange County funds something, it’s like putting the Good Housekeeping seal of approval on that organization," added Supervisor Bill Campbell. "Funding an organization that provides abortions is not something I’d like to do."
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