Posted on 07/19/2019 9:34:51 AM PDT by Morgana
Back in 1970, the Nixon administration enacted the Title X Family Funding Program. As described on the HHS website, “For more than 40 years, Title X family planning clinics have played a critical role in ensuring access to a broad range of family planning and related preventive health services for millions of low-income or uninsured individuals.”
For years, abortion providers were unable to access these funds, until President Clinton decided otherwise. Since then, abortion mills like Planned Parenthood have happily tapped into these funds to make sure that, utilizing some creative bookkeeping, women from low-income households have access to abortion and abortion counseling.
But no more. In June of last year, the Trump Administration announced the Protect Life Rule, which prohibits fund recipients from providing abortion counseling or being “co-located” with an abortion clinic.
Planned Parenthood and a number of states immediately sued to block the Protect Life Rule from taking effect.
Last week, after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stop the Rule, the Administration announced that the Rule will take effect immediately.
Naturally, Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen called the decision “devastating news,” and promised to continue legal action. (Wen has since been removed as president.)
Here’s why she said this. According to the Catholic News Agency, “The Protect Life Rule will strip about $60 million in federal funding from Planned Parenthood, whose clinics both refer for abortion services and are often co-located within abortion facilities. Planned Parenthood presently receives about one-fifth of the total amount of Title X funds distributed and serves about 40 percent of all clients who benefit from Title X.”
Planned Parenthood quickly announced plans to create an emergency fund (meaning they’ll shake down their donors) to replace the lost dollars, and we’re already starting to hear about the tragedy of lost “health care” funds for low-income women. The head of California’s largest recipient of Title X funds provided a typical response, “We will continue to pursue relief through the courts to protect access to essential health services for the millions of low-income patients served by Title X nationwide.”
Don’t buy the frantic wording. Not a single penny has been reduced from Title X funding. Title X money is still available to, and I quote, “assist in the establishment and operation of voluntary family planning projects which provide … natural family planning methods, infertility services, and services for adolescents; highly effective contraceptive methods; breast and cervical cancer screening and prevention services that correspond with nationally recognized standards of care; STD and HIV prevention education, counseling, testing, and referrals . . . and other preventive health services.”
That sounds like a pretty robust list of services available to low-income women. The money simply can’t be used to further abortion.
And it’s unclear why this should bother Planned Parenthood anyway, given its claim that abortion is just 3 percent of the services it provides to women. All this gnashing of teeth reveals how ludicrous that claim has always been.
Now, as Yogi Berra said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” But here’s mine: The Protect Life Rule will probably remain in effect during the remainder of the Trump Administration, but should a Democratic contender take residence in the White House, it will be dead on day 1 of their administration.
This brings me to three points. First, elections matter. Second, while I am grateful for the Trump Administration’s commitment to life, shame on the Republican majority in Congress that has consistently failed to de-fund Planned Parenthood. Governance by administrative rule will not protect the lives of the unborn in the long run.
And third, the fight remains: Not only to make abortion illegal, but also unthinkable.
As far as I know Planned Parenthood is de-funded
I guess PP will have to sell more baby parts to subsidize the low income abortions.
FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
Patriots are reminded that post-17th Amendment (17A) ratification Title X is unconstitutional imo. It is unconstitutional because the states have never expressly constitutionally given the feds the specific power either to regulate, tax and spend for providing healthcare and other social spending services for citizens, or to make laws discouraging race and sex discrimination outside the scope of the 15th and 19th Amendment voting rights protections, the Founding States making the 10th Amendment (10A) to clarify that such powers are reserved uniquely to the states.
10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
From related threads…
In fact, a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting Supreme Court justices had clarified that Congress is prohibited from appropriating taxes for anything that it cannot justify under its constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers, caring for needy not listed among those powers.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Justice Joseph Story had later reflected on Congress's limited power to appropriate taxes by clarifying that the states uniquely have power (10A) to care for the needy.
"The power to regulate manufactures, not having been confided to congress, they have no more right to act upon it, than they have to interfere with the systems of education, the poor laws, or the road laws, of the states [emphases added]. Congress is empowered to lay taxes for revenue, it is true; but there is no power to encourage, protect, or meddle with manufactures." —Joseph Story, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, Commentaries on the Constitution 2
Next, the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, a constitutional lawmaker, had also indicated that the Founding States had left the care of the people, including the needy, to the states, not the feds.
”... the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is in the States, and not in the Federal Government [emphases added].” —Rep. John Bingham, Congressional Globe, 1866. (See about middle of 3rd column.)
The reason that the desperate, unconstitutionally big federal government is now providing care for voters, legal and illegal, is this. As a consequence of the ill-conceived 17A, corrupt federal lawmakers have been exploiting low-information voters by promising them every spending program under the sun to effectively buy their votes, such voters probably never taught that the feds don't have the constitutional authority to tax and spend for INTRAstate purposes.
Justice Brandeis had aptly put it this way.
"It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose [emphasis added], serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.” — Justice Brandeis, Laboratories of democracy.
Note that constitutional limits on states as laboratories of democracy is that states cannot establish privileged / protected classes or abridge constitutionally enumerated rights, and must maintain a constitutionally guaranteed republican form of government.
Again, the states, not the feds, uniquely have the government power to regulate, tax and spend in the name of social spending services.
H O W E V E R…
Using inappropriate words like "concept" and "implicit" here is what was left of 10th Amendment-protected state power to serve the people after FDR’s state sovereignty-ignoring majority justices got finished with it in Wickard v. Filburn.
"In discussion and decision, the point of reference, instead of being what was "necessary and proper" to the exercise by Congress of its granted power, was often some concept [???] of sovereignty thought to be implicit [??? emphases added] in the status of statehood." —Wickard v. Filburn, 1942
The individual states won't be able to provide the social spending services that their respective citizens want until patriots do the following.
Patriots need to elect a new patriot Congress in the 2020 elections that will not only promise to support PDJT's vision for MAGA, now KAG, but will also promise to stop stealing state revenues in the form of unconstitutional federal taxes according to the Gibbons v. Ogden excerpt (below), again, taxes that career lawmakers cannot justify under Congress's constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
And to make such changes permanent, patriots also need to support PDJT in working with the states to repeal the 16th and 17th Amendments.
Insights welcome.
Remember in November 2020!
MAGA! Now KAG! (Keep America Great!)
"The “Holy Grail” of organized crime is to control government power to tax." —me
"The constitutionally undefined political parties are basically rival, corrupt voter unions, “union dues” paid by means of unconstitutional federal taxes.” —me
"The smart crooks long ago figured out that getting themselves elected to federal office to make unconstitutional tax laws to fill their pockets is a much easier way to make a living than robbing banks." —me
"Federal career lawmakers probably laugh all the way to the bank to deposit bribes for putting loopholes for the rich and corporations in tax appropriations laws, Congress actually not having the express constitutional authority to make most appropriations laws where domestic policy is concerned. Such laws are based on stolen state powers and uniquely associated stolen state revenues." —me
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