Federal Court Upholds Ohio Law Defunding Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Mar 12, 2019   |   12:32PM   |   Columbus, Ohio

In a major pro-life victory today, a federal court has upheld an Ohio law that defunds Planned Parenthood, which runs approximately one-third of the abortion centers in the Buckeye State.

After the Planned Parenthood abortion company was caught in multiple states selling aborted babies and their body parts, several states took steps to de-fund it and Ohio became the 10th state at the time to take steps to end or cut Planned Parenthood funding. Then Ohio Governor John Kasich signed the pro-life bill into law.

Planned Parenthood runs three abortion centers in the state and every Planned Parenthood clinic refers women for abortions.

Today, a federal court gave pro-life Gov. Mike DeWine the ability to enforce the defunding law.

In a decision written by Judge Jeffrey Sutton, the court struck down a ruling last year by a three-judge panel of the same appeals court that concluded the law was unconstitutional.

The ruling by full the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was 11-to-6. As state attorney general last year, DeWine had asked the full court to consider the case after decision by the three-judge panel.

Sutton, Ohio’s former state solicitor, wrote that the Ohio law does “not violate a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. It does not condition a woman’s access to any of these public health programs on refusing to obtain an abortion.”

“It makes these programs available to every woman, whether she seeks an abortion or not,” Sutton wrote. “Nor, on this record, has there been any showing that the Ohio law will limit the number of clinics that offer abortions in the state.”

The Planned Parenthood abortion company was required to show that the law somehow burdened women’s health but it was not able to prove that was the case, since plenty of legitimate medical centers exist that provide non-abortion health care for women.

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“Its vow to keep performing abortions sinks any pre-enforcement action, and any speculation about what would happen if it changed its mind is just that,” Sutton wrote.

Michael Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, told LifeNews he was delighted by the news.

“The 6th Circuit ruled that no corporation has a Constitutional right to our tax dollars and they got this right,” he said. “Ohio Right to Life is absolutely thrilled that Planned Parenthood will not get any more of our state tax dollars. Thanks to this very encouraging decision, Ohioans of conscience won’t have to worry about whether their tax dollars are going towards abortions.”

“Ohio Right to Life worked tirelessly to enact this law and we are grateful that the federal appellate court agrees with our strategy. We’re thankful for the leadership of former Representative Margy Conditt, who sponsored this bill in the Ohio House,” he added.

Responding to the decision, Catherine Glenn Foster, President and CEO of Americans United for Life, told LifeNews: “As the full Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has made clear today, Planned Parenthood, America’s biggest abortionist, has no constitutional ‘right’ to offer women abortions, nor to receive public taxpayers dollars for doing so. AUL applauds the court’s strong denunciation of Planned Parenthood’s ‘Big Lie’ that it represents the best interests of women when it advocates for the kind of unlimited abortion on demand that New York recently adopted, and we look forward to a similar conclusion by the federal courts affirming this Administration’s decision to keep Title X funds out of the hands of abortionists like Planned Parenthood.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Casey Mattox told LifeNews at the time the law was signed that i made sense.

He said: “Not one more penny should go to Planned Parenthood, a scandal-plagued abortion business that does not provide comprehensive health care services for women. Ohio’s new law terminates funding for Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses, freeing up money for more widely available and more comprehensive low-cost healthcare options for women and families in the state. Taxpayer dollars should not go to organizations with a long track record of abusive and potentially fraudulent billing practices, that have been caught in authenticated undercover videos negotiating prices for baby body parts, and that have repeatedly failed to report the sexual abuse of girls. Ohio is right to end its relationship with organizations undeserving of taxpayer money and unworthy of the taxpayers’ trust.”

A strong majority of Ohio residents wanted Planned Parenthood to be de-funded and the money redirected to community health centers, according to a poll at that time.

Pollsters found 64 percent of Ohioans believed that Congress should end taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood, which received more than $528 million in taxpayer funding in 2014.

Even more Ohioans (68 percent) said taxpayers should not subsidize a group liked Planned Parenthood, and the government should redirect funding to the thousands of health clinics across the country that provide comprehensive health care to women and their families.

The expose videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all 14:

  • In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
  • In the second video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
  • In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
  • In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
  • In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
  • In the sixth video: Holly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
  • In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
  • In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
  • The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
  • The 10th video: catches the nation’s biggest abortion business selling specific body parts — including the heart, eyes and “gonads” of unborn babies. The video also shows the shocking ways in which Planned Parenthood officials admit that they are breaking federal law by selling aborted baby body parts for profit.
  • Unreleased Videos: Unreleased videos from CMP show Deb Vanderhei of Planned Parenthood caught on tape talking about how Planned Parenthood abortion business affiliates may “want to increase revenue [from selling baby parts] but we can’t stop them…” Another video has a woman talking about the “financial incentives” of selling aborted baby body parts.
  • The 11th video: catches a Texas Planned Parenthood abortionist planning to sell the intact heads of aborted babies for research. Amna Dermish is caught on tape describing an illegal partial-birth abortion procedure to terminate living, late-term unborn babies which she hopes will yield intact fetal heads for brain harvesting.
  • The 12th video in the series shows new footage of Jennefer Russo, medical director at Planned Parenthood in Orange County, California, describing to undercover investigators how her abortion business tries to harvest intact aborted babies’ bodies for a local for-profit biotech company and changes the abortion procedure to do so.
  • The 13th video: exposes a Planned Parenthood medical director admitting that babies born alive after abortion are sometimes killed.
  • The 14th video: catches Planned Parenthood executives discussing gruesome abortion procedures and the sale of body parts from aborted babies for profit.