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The Daily Signal
A 10th State
Defunded Planned Parenthood. Why There’s So Much Momentum Now.
Leah Jessen
February 23, 2016
Adding to the momentum to defund abortion giant Planned Parenthood,
Ohio Gov. John Kasich signed a bill Sunday that strips $1.3 million in
taxpayer money from the organization.
Ten states—Wisconsin and Ohio being the most recent—have taken action
over the past several months to cut taxpayer dollars from Planned
Parenthood.
“Not one more penny should go to Planned Parenthood, a scandal-plagued
abortion business that does not provide comprehensive health care
services for women,” Casey Mattox, Alliance Defending Freedom senior
counsel, said in a statement.
The Ohio Legislature passed the bill, H.B. 294, earlier this month and
sent it to Kasich, a Republican, for his signature. Under the new law,
state and certain federal funds will be directed to federally qualified
health centers and departments instead of entities that perform or
promote elective abortions.
Mattox, who testified before the Ohio Senate’s Government Oversight and
Reform Committee to provide legal opinion on an earlier Senate version
of the bill, added:
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 health care 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.
Planned Parenthood has fought other states’ efforts to cut off its
funding, arguing that its constitutional rights were being violated.
The legislation “will have devastating consequences for women across
Ohio,” Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of
America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement.
At least a dozen state governments and the U.S. Congress began
investigations into Planned Parenthood following videos released by the
Center for Medical Progress (CMP) last summer. The videos, which showed
undercover footage, sparked a nationwide conversation into alleged
illegal conduct by Planned Parenthood.
“Planned Parenthood’s involvement in abortion is well-known,” Chuck
Donovan, president of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, told The Daily
Signal. “The Center for Medical Progress videos have just pointed out
exactly what that means in a way that you can’t look away from it.”
David Daleiden, founder of CMP, and his colleague Sandra Merritt were
indicted for falsifying driver’s licenses used during their
investigation into Planned Parenthood. Daleiden was also indicted for
knowingly and intentionally offering to buy fetal tissue. Planned
Parenthood has claimed no wrongdoing.
“The Center for Medical Progress put this on the national agenda,”
Donovan said. “So much of government ends up being pointing out
something that’s been a problem for a while and finally recognizing
that the bureaucracy has let things happen.”
Donovan thinks the legal battle over the videos will have “very little
effect.”
The videos are not the only factor that has played into states, like
Ohio, defunding Planned Parenthood.
A couple of states defunded Planned Parenthood well before the videos
were released, Donovan says. The videos, he says, expedited the process
and made clear how Planned Parenthood “underscored the humanity of the
baby.”
“It’s not just allegations of harvesting and selling tiny livers,
lungs, and hearts of aborted unborn children that have led legislators
to question continued taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood,” Sarah
Torre, a policy analyst in the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil
Society at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.
“The nation’s largest abortion provider has also faced accusations of
bad conduct in the past, including financial waste, abuse, and possible
fraud with taxpayer dollars, and some have even been accused of failing
to report the sexual abuse of minor girls.”
She added:
Meanwhile, cancer screening and preventative services have decreased at
Planned Parenthood, even as the number of abortions affiliates perform
each year has increased. Taxpayer money would be better spent at the
many other health centers that provide a wide range of care for women
without entanglement in abortion on demand.
President Barack Obama vetoed a bill that would have put a one-year
halt on federal taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood. The House of
Representatives failed to override the veto.
“There’s a lot of momentum that’s in states as well as in the
Congress,” Donovan said. “The states’ actions indicate that even if
Washington is tied up for the moment, states are still interested in
going forward. They’re doing it different ways, but they’re getting it
done.”
Read this and other articles at The Daily Signal
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