Why Should Taxpayers Defund Planned Parenthood? Here are 10 Reasons Last week, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan vowed that Republican lawmakers will make defunding Planned Parenthood a priority.
Joe Carter at The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission recently provided 10 reasons why Christians (as taxpayers) should support defunding Planned Parenthood.
1. Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of abortions in America—and the largest recipient of federal funding for family planning.
Planned Parenthood reportedly performs over 323,000 abortions per year. It is also the recipient of the most federal funding for a family planning institution. It receives about $344.5 million in direct federal funds and another $1.2 billion in funding from Medicaid every year. This is taxpayer funding going toward an organization that provides thousands of abortions each year.
2. Planned Parenthood covers up the crimes of rapists, pimps, and sex traffickers.
Planned Parenthood has a shady record when it comes to protecting victims of sexual abuse. There are reports that suggest the abortion provider has even been willing to work with pimps and sex traffickers in order to exploit young women.
3. Planned Parenthood’s corporate profits come at the taxpayer’s expense.
Taxpayer dollars make up at least 40 percent of Planned Parenthood’s revenue and the entirety of its profits. Taxpayer funding is essential to this company.
4. Planned Parenthood opposes abstinence-only education and promotes sexual deviancy.
Planned Parenthood strongly opposes sex education that focuses on abstinence and has gone so far as to file lawsuits against school districts that have decided to implement abstinence-only programs. The organization claims to offer “value-neutral” sex education. (As an example, on their website aimed at teenagers, they included an article that teaches kids that, “Some straight couples use anal sex as a way to preserve the woman's virginity.”)
5. Planned Parenthood systematically engages in fraudulent ‘overbilling’ to maximize revenue from government-funded programs
Investigations of Planned Parenthood financial data and practices conducted in 12 states found hundreds of thousands of abortion related claims were billed unlawfully to Medicaid. Auditors and investigators have specifically identified Planned Parenthood affiliates as the source of at least $12.8 million in waste, abuse, and potentially fraudulent overbilling and penalties. The audits also found numerous improper practices resulting in significant federal funding overpayments of more than $8.5 million, and overbilling of state family planning programs amounted to more than $123.8 million.
6. While taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood doubled, the number of cancer screenings they provided dropped by half
One of the justifications Planned Parenthood uses to acquire federal funding is the claim that they provide necessary medical services, such as cancer screening. But taxpayer funding of the abortion provider has doubled since 2005 while the number of cancer screening has been cut by 50 percent (and the number of abortions provided increased by more than 12 percent).
7. Planned Parenthood may have violated federal law in selling fetal tissue for monetary gain
A recent Congressional investigation uncovered documents and received testimony from confidential informants indicating that four Planned Parenthood clinics may have violated federal law forbidding the transfer of fetal tissue for “valuable consideration.” Congress has referred the matter to the U.S. Department of Justice for further investigation.
8. Planned Parenthood altered abortion techniques to increase success of harvesting fetal tissue from abortions
The recent Congressional investigation uncovered that Planned Parenthood would change abortion techniques to maximize recovery of intact fetal parts (i.e., body parts from unborn babies). When congressional investigators questioned a Los Angeles Planned Parenthood abortion provider, she admitted she would change abortion procedures as to increase the likelihood of a successful procurement of specific fetal tissue for resale.
9. Planned Parenthood violated patient confidentiality to facilitate sale of fetal tissue from aborted babies
Some Planned Parenthood affiliates seem to be more concerned with making a sale on body parts than they are with securing their patient’s privacy.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) established the Privacy Rule, which protects all individually identifiable health information by setting limits and conditions on the uses and disclosures that may be made of such information without patient authorization. A recent Congressional investigation found that several Planned Parenthood clinics violated this rule by disclosed patients’ individually identifiable health information in an effort to resale human fetal tissue obtained from abortions to a biomedical supply company.
10. Planned Parenthood supports infanticide through advocacy of partial-birth abortion
For more than two decades, Planned Parenthood has consistently supported partial-birth abortion and opposed any efforts to ban this infanticidal practice.
In this gruesome procedure, the abortionist pulls a living baby out of the womb feet-first and into the birth canal, except for the head, which the abortionist purposely keeps lodged just inside the cervix. The abortionist then punctures the base of the baby’s skull with a surgical instrument.
In 2013, a Planned Parenthood of Florida lobbyist, testifying against Florida's Born Alive Infants Protection Act, told lawmakers that if a baby survives an abortion, it is debatable whether that baby should live or die. And while in the Illinois state senate, Barack Obama worked with Planned Parenthood to determine how he should vote on partial-birth abortion legislation. (With Planned Parenthood's blessing, he voted “present” to protect his “100 percent” record on pro-abortion votes.)
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