FReepmail to be added to the Congress Watch Ping List.
Posted on 11/16/2007 5:35:00 PM PST by mdittmar
The nation's largest pro-life group is calling on Congress to stop giving taxpayer dollars to organizations that perform abortions by passing one of two bills designed to ban the funding of abortion.
The Title X Family Planning Act (S.351) sponsored by Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), or the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act (H.R. 4133) sponsored by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), would deny federal family planning funds to non-hospitals that perform abortions, with narrow exceptions.
"Taxpayer funds should not be given to organizations that are the backbone of the abortion industry, such as Planned Parenthood," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of National Right to Life.
"These bills do not call for a reduction in family planning funding, rather they prevent abortion providers from receiving tax dollars," Johnson added.
The "Mexico City Policy" prohibits taxpayer funds from funding private, foreign family-planning organizations that perform or actively promote abortion, so a similar policy should be adopted domestically, the NRLF said.
"It makes no sense to guard taxpayer funds from being used by abortion performing and promoting organizations abroad but at the same time provide millions to the biggest abortion provider in the United States," said NRLC Executive Director David O'Steen.
According to its 2005-2006 annual report, Planned Parenthood performed nearly 20 percent of all abortions in the U.S. That's 264,943 abortions in 2005. It received $305.3 million in government grants and contracts.
In a statement on its Web site, Planned Parenthood said Vitter made a similar attempt in 2001 to ban federal funds from going to organizations that provide abortions by offering an amendment to a pending appropriations bill that was designed to undermine Title X.
"The Vitter amendment would have prevented private organizations from receiving Title X funds to provide contraception and other preventtive health care services, even if they provided abortions or abortion related services with their own, non-Title X funds," the Web site says.
"Had the amendment succeeded, it would have restricted the funding availability of contraceptives and other preventive health care affecting one million low-income women by prohibiting nearly 600 hospitals, Planned Parenthood affiliates, and other established health care providers from receiving Title X funds," it adds.
"The amendment would have endangered the health of low-income women, threatened the Title X family planning clinic network, and disregarded the current prohibition on the use of Title X funds to provide, promote, or encourage abortions," it says.
Defund Planned Parenthood? Capital idea! And while we’re at it let’s defund the National Endowment for the Arts and National Public Radio. It should be easy since we control the White House, the House of Representatives, AND the Senate.
What’s that you say? We controlled those bodies for 6 years but didn’t defund anything? And now we only control the White House with a lame duck tenant?
Spare me.
Let the liberals fund this killing of the unborn with their own donations. There is nothing in the constitution that says we have to fund abortion in America with tax dollars.
Here is a man who *should* be the heir to Reagan.
Hear, hear! - Boy did you nail it! Bravo!
Exactly, FRiend!!
It’s about time! Best of luck to them. :)
Point well taken.
It takes a lot to get Americans riled up.
I think we are getting riled.
Could you expand on this?
Thanks.
Why should the US Congress ever attempt to fund an organization that’s main (if not sole) purpose is the extermination of unborn US citizens?
When people say (as Rudy supporters do) that the president’s personal beliefs on abortion aren’t important as long as they pick the right judges, I use the Mexico City Policy as counterpoint. Rudy could dismantle the Mexico City Policy and not even touch the judiciary if he is elected.
Sure. I wanted, and like a sap expected, the GOP to defund the left at their first opportunity. Instead they frittered away 6 freaking years of control and didn’t do squat to advance the conservative agenda, let alone roll back the liberal one.
Doomed, grandiose proposals to do so now ring hollow and tell me the GOP is trying to pull one over on the saps once again. In the words of the great Yogi Berra, Include me out.
But at least I’m not bitter.
Waggs, pingworthy?
Excellent post!
When the Republicans had their chance they ran from the Democrat newsrooms like scared bunny rabbits.
And some are confused as to why conservatives stayed home during the last election.
I checked out my congressman’s record through votesmart.org. He EARNED my vote.
If I had to choose between a liberal and a stealth liberal I would have abstained.
FReepmail to be added to the Congress Watch Ping List.
Amen to that. Cowards and sell-outs to not defund the left in the 6 years the Republicans controlled all Senate, Congress and the Presidency. Your post put it perfectly.
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