A county council in Indiana voted Wednesday to give taxpayer dollars to Planned Parenthood despite the urging of pro-life community members to stop funding the abortion chain.
Indiana Daily Student reports the Monroe County Council in Bloomington, Indiana approved a $2,000 grant to the Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky. The grant money is supposed to be used for non-abortion services at Planned Parenthood; however, it still indirectly supports the abortion business.
The council members spent more than an hour listening to about 35 local pro-life and abortion advocates before they voted Wednesday, according to the report.
Here’s more from the report:
The first to speak was Monroe County resident Zachary Branham, who expressed his concern with hormones used in birth control. Branham’s mother, Rhonda, and younger sister, Katie, also spoke out against Planned Parenthood’s health care.
“How do we persuade women not to have an abortion?” Katie Branham said. “As always, we must persuade her with love. Abortion is the greatest destroyer of love.”
Money given from the grant supports Planned Parenthood’s Women’s Health Fund, which provides financial support for low-income patients seeking birth control, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, and colposcopies. This money is not used for abortion services.
While pro-life supporters argued for stronger leaders to stand up against abortion providers on the basis of hormonal side effects of birth control and the morality of terminating pregnancies, pro-choice supporters chose anecdotes to state their case.
Local blogger Scott Tibbs said the council also approved funding ($3,250, according to the student newspaper) for the All Options Pregnancy Center, which has an abortion fund to help women pay for abortions.
“Money is fungible, so when ‘all options’ gets money for other programs they have more money available for their abortion fund,” Tibbs said.
Prior to the meeting, Mayor John Hamilton spoke to pro-abortion protesters outside the county Courthouse and encouraged them to “unify, re-energize and reflect after this election,” according to the report.
Mike Fichter, president and CEO of Indiana Right to Life, encouraged local pro-lifers to not give up.
“The pro-life community is gravely disappointed in the Monroe County Council’s decision to fund Bloomington’s only abortion center, Planned Parenthood,” Fichter told LifeNews. “We urge Monroe County residents to be vigilant in working towards ending this funding in the future. Taxpayers deserve better.”
As Indiana RTL noted on its blog, Planned Parenthood of Bloomington is where a staff person coached undercover investigator Lila Rose, posing as a 13-year-old girl, to go out of state for an abortion after she said her 31-year-old boyfriend got her pregnant.
The abortion facility performed 822 abortions in 2015, according to the group.
