House Health Care Restructuring Bill Funds Pro-Abortion Planned Parenthood
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
June 23, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — While pro-life advocates battle the rationing portions of the Kennedy health care restructuring bill in the Senate, the House version presents other problems. House leaders introduced their own measure on Friday that sneaks Planned Parenthood funding into its 852 pages.
Several pro-abortion congressmen, including Reps. George Miller and Henry Waxman, both California Democrats, and Democrat Charlie Rangel of New York, are behind the measure.
The bill includes almost everything on President Obama’s wish list including, for the first time in either chamber of Congress, the "family planning" nightmare the Family Research Council has been warning about.
FRC president Tony Perkins says the House health care bill calls for even more government funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business, which has seen its abortions increase as it receives more taxpayer support.
"For weeks, key players in the abortion movement have been working with the Obama administration to guarantee that they would profit from any health care overhaul," Perkins said Tuesday. "That lobbying could pay off–quite literally–in the House."
"The Miller-Waxman-Rangel bill is a dream come true for groups like Planned Parenthood," he told LifeNews.com. "Under this proposal, funding for ‘family planning’ would be mandatory, meaning that organizations like Planned Parenthood (which already counts on taxpayers for a third of its budget) would stand to make even more under the guise of ‘reform.”"
Perkins says pro-life Americans should be upset because questions about how the federal government will pay for the House health care restructuring plan haven’t been addressed while funding for the top abortion business has.
"What we do know is that Planned Parenthood has a seat at the President’s table, and that should alarm every American who cherishes life, freedom, and conscience," Perkins adds.
The latest Planned Parenthood annual report, released in April for the year 2007-2008, showed abortions increased to 305,310 abortions up from 289,750 in 2006. That 5.3 percent increase came at a time when the Alan Guttmacher Institute, its former research arm, showed abortions were at near-historic lows.
The annual report showed more government funding heading to the abortion business even if the taxpayer funds did not directly pay for abortions.
The total government grants and contracts received by PPFA affiliates from government sources including state, local and federal governments, increased from $337 million to $350 million.
Looking at Planned Parenthood data from 1997 to the present, the increase in government funding corresponds with an increase in the number of abortions. (See image)
In 1997, Planned Parenthood did about 160,000 abortions and received approximately $160 million in total taxpayer funding from various levels of government. Both the number of abortions and the amount of money received from government, supposedly for family planning to reduce abortions, has double since then.
Perkins said pro-life advocates need to get involved now to ask their members of Congress to strongly oppose the bill and its abortion funding.
"With the public growing more critical about the cost by the day, we have a real chance to defeat this health care takeover," the FRC president concluded. "Now that abortion coverage is no longer a hypothetical, we need all hands on deck."
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