Two new bills before the U.S. Senate would stop taxpayer dollars from funding the billion-dollar abortion industry.
On Friday, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, introduced the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act to prohibit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from giving Title X grants to groups like Planned Parenthood that promote and/or provide abortions, Fox 17 WZTV reports.
“We must close loopholes that allow for abortion giants like Planned Parenthood to receive federal funding,” Blackburn said. “This legislation will help end taxpayer-funded support for the abortion industry and protect the unborn.”
She said the money would be better spent on comprehensive healthcare rather than groups that make money killing unborn babies in abortions.
Planned Parenthood receives more than half a billion taxpayer dollars annually, largely through Medicaid reimbursements and Title X grants. President Donald Trump issued an executive order that defunded Planned Parenthood from Title X, but President Joe Biden took action Thursday to reverse it.
Planned Parenthood does about 40 percent of all abortions in the U.S., or about 345,000 a year, according to its annual reports.
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U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, said defunding the largest abortion group in America should not be controversial.
On Friday, he introduced a similar bill, the Women’s Public Health and Safety Act, to give states the power to exclude abortion groups like Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid funds.
“Abortion is not health care,” Lankford said. “It should not be controversial to say that taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for abortion, and it shouldn’t be controversial for states to have the right to decide that Medicaid funds will not support an abortion provider’s bottom line.”
Currently, federal law requires states to allow any qualified provider to participate in the Medicaid system. A number of states have tried to defund Planned Parenthood without success because of this law.
Texas was successful but only after a lengthy court battle. The state said Planned Parenthood no longer qualifies as a provider after undercover video showed its employees “admitting to morally bankrupt and unlawful conduct, including violations of federal law by manipulating the timing and methods of abortions to obtain fetal tissue for their own research.”
U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, introduced a House version of the Women’s Public Health and Safety Act on Jan. 5.
“For too long, abortion providers have operated on the taxpayer’s dime, while performing elective abortions in the name of ‘healthcare,’” Cloud said. “That’s why the first bill I introduced in the 117th Congress is this bill advocating for the preborn and their pregnant mothers in need. Sen. Lankford and I are seeking to empower states to end federal subsidies for abortion providers and to ensure quality healthcare is made available to women.”
A recent nonpartisan Government Accountability Office report found that Planned Parenthood received nearly $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements over a three-year period.
Republicans in Congress have been trying to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion groups for years. In 2017, when they had a majority in both chambers and President Donald Trump in the White House, legislation to defund the abortion chain nearly passed. The U.S. House passed the legislation; however, it died in the U.S. Senate when several Republican senators joined Democrats in opposing it.
Polls consistently show that most Americans do not want their tax dollars to pay for abortions, and the millions of tax dollars that go to Planned Parenthood every year subsidize its abortion business.
A new poll from Marist this week found that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose Democrat leaders’ plans to force taxpayers to fund abortions. According to the poll, 77 percent oppose using tax dollars to support abortion in other countries. Significantly, this includes a majority of Democrats (55 percent) and pro-choice Americans (64 percent).
Most Americans (58 percent) also oppose using tax dollars to fund abortions in the U.S., according to the Marist poll. Similarly, a Politico/Harvard University poll found that just 36 percent of likely voters supported taxpayer funding for abortions, while 58 percent opposed it.
Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report, which is publicly available online, lists 345,672 abortions, an increase of nearly 4 percent from the previous year. Meanwhile, many of Planned Parenthood’s actual health services continue to decline. It provided less contraception, sterilizations, cancer screenings, adoption referrals and other women’s health services than the previous year, mirroring a continued downward trend. Its patient numbers also have been dropping steadily over the past decade.
