After Komen, the Next Big Planned Parenthood Fight
The videos, which became a rallying point for pro-life advocates, were released less than a month after Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) introduced a bill to the House that would ban federal funding for abortion providers. Several pro-life Democrats cosponsored the bill.
"Every American should be shocked that an employee of the largest recipient of federal funds under Title X has been recorded aiding and abetting underage sex trafficking," Pence said, calling for his colleagues to vote yes on his bill.
They did. The amendment to defund Planned Parenthood passed the House of Representatives easily in February but lost 42 to 58 in the Senate. No Democratic Senator voted for defunding. At the same time, 11 states eliminated or decreased funding to Planned Parenthood. Among them:
• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie cut $7.5 million from Title X funding, which aids low-income people with family planning and reproductive health issues. The money was redirected to health centers that do not provide abortions.
• The Indiana legislature denied public funding of abortion providers, leaving Planned Parenthood without the $2 million to $3 million it usually receives from the state.
• New Hampshire declined to renew a $1.8 million contract with Planned Parenthood. The federal government later stepped in with a similar contract, but pro-life groups have sued over that decision.
Losing government funds can be crippling. Twelve Planned Parenthood clinics in Texas closed this summer after the state legislature eliminated $58 million from Planned Parenthood over the next two years. Six of Minnesota's twenty-four clinics closed after Congress cut funds to Title X. Five more in central Indiana closed.
The success of defunding in the states and in the House resulted from a significant pro-life showing in the 2010 midterm elections. While pro-life Republicans gained, pro-life Democrats lost ground. But with net pro-life gains in the Senate and the House, the defunding bills that followed were only natural, according to Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes.
"When a party has adopted the pro-life cause, and it gets a majority in state legislatures and the House in Washington, it moves on those issues," he said.
The struggling economy also played a part in the surge of legislation, AUL's Yoest said. "When the economy is in such bad shape, people start understanding that our federal tax dollars are underwriting the abortion business."
The pieces were coming together, Yoest said. The House was willing to defund Planned Parenthood. Live Action took the public inside the clinics, where underage girls could apparently be treated with no questions asked. And a physician, Kermit Gosnell, made national headlines last winter when he was charged with eight counts of murder for the deaths of a woman and seven newborns in his Philadelphia abortion clinic. At the end of 2011, police arrested two other clinic doctors, charging them with homicide in connection with late-term abortions performed in Maryland.
Yoest said AUL has been tracking Planned Parenthood for 20 years. Last summer, the group put together a report alleging systemic abuses in the organization. "So we led with the economic questions," Yoest said.
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Darrell J. Davis
As for you people defending PP, look up its history. the organization was founded to eliminate poor black babies and the mentally infirm. It was started to help create a "master race" and served as one of the inspirations to Hitler and his "final solution". Don't take my word for it, Google "quotes by Margaret Sanger" and "Eugenics" and see what you come up with. Wake up people! Satan is hard at work within the halls of Planned Parenthood and disguising it as "healthcare".
Original Anna
Gee, millions of women have depended on PP for "health care" for many years, was that while killing their unborn babies, some 50 million deaths by torture, which I think is murder without a trial by a jury of your peers, not health care. And women actually go for this murder instead of adoption. Something is wrong with the women in this country. When did women become the killers of their children and call it "health care" instead of "taking care of them". Your guilt and denial of what you have done won't make you guiltless, maybe acceptance of your "abortion" and forgiveness from Jesus will help you but you need to ask Jesus' help and stop defending what you and millions of women have done by denying it. And stop listening to men saying "It's your body, do what feels good to you with it." The men end up feeling good and you end up a murderer unless you go the adoption route. There are millions of other women waiting for your baby, proof of this is the number of foreign adoptions.
Godslion Godslion Godslionj
By the way, the text at Exodus 21 that some try to use to justify baby murder in the womb is speaking about a premature birth not a miscarriage. Noted Hebrew scholar Walter C. Kaiser, Jr. has observed that it is a “gross error,” either by translation or by means of commentary, to argue that a miscarriage is suggested in this passage (Toward Old Testament Ethics, Zondervan, 1983, p. 170). In an excellent article which discusses this passage at length, Jack W. Cottrell, a professor of theology at the Cincinnati Bible Seminary, declared: “There is absolutely no linguistic justification for translating verse 22 to refer to a miscarriage”,What, then, is the passage teaching? Simply this. If two fighting men injure a pregnant woman, causing her to give premature birth, yet no harm follows to either mother or child – a fine will be levied as a penalty for such carelessness. However, if any harm followed, to mother or babe, justice was to be meted out commensurate with degree of damage.
Godslion Godslion Godslion
The murder of babies in the womb - falsely called abortion- is NOT health care, its death care! How can anyone who claims to be a Christian not be conflicted that 55 million babies have been murdered in the womb in this country since Roe vs. Wade legalized this monstrous act? Again God says he " hates the shedding of innocent blood!" What blood is more innocent than that of a baby growing in its mothers womb? Moreover the church has ALWAYS been involved in and AGAINST this practice for 2000 years! Moreover the penalty in the Old Testament for killing a baby in the womb was a life for a life! The solution to the baby murder problem is for women to stop playing the whore by having sex outside of marriage and for men to stop playing the whoremonger by having sex outside of marriage, and instead to live by Gods righteous standard and only have sex within the bounds of marriage as GOD COMMANDS! That would end 99% of baby murder in the womb! We need to listen to God!
Anonymous
Planned Parenthood saves the lives of women. Millions of women have depended on them for health care for many many years. 40 years ago they were my only source of health care. I, along with most other women will always support the work of Planned Parenthood. I am not conflicted in the least. I understand Christianity to support the lives of individuals. I believe satan is using the issue of abortion to divide the church. It is not an essential doctrine...if it were there would be more written about it in the Bible. It is not clear and we should not be. In the OT Law a woman's life was valued higher than that of her unborn. The punishment was significantly less if a crime resulted in the death of the unborn. That's about the only scripture we have to go on. Planned Parenthood takes care of women's health. It is not an issue the church should be involved in. Period.