Kristan Hawkins: Students for Life Calls on Trump to Defund Planned Parenthood

WASHINGTON D.C. (11-28-18) — In a letter to the White House on the eve of a meeting to be held there, Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins praised President Trump for his pro-life successes and asked that he redouble his efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, redirecting the scarce taxpayer resource to true medical care for women and their children, born and preborn.

Hawkins also noted that SFLA would be calling on Millennials in the more than 1,200 groups on college, university and high school campuses and SFLA supporters nationwide to reach out to the President as well as Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar II, asking them to redirect tax payer dollars away from fetal tissue research funded to the tune of more than $100 million at HHS, as one of five pro-life efforts that his administration can pursue in the next two years.

Dear Mr. President,

Your commitment to respecting preborn life persuaded pro-life leaders like me, who heads the largest pro-life organization of our kind, that supporting you and your administration was the right choice in 2016. Like me, many in my organization of more than 1,200 pro-life student groups nationwide are committed to voting pro-life first. Since 2016, efforts like strong Supreme Court picks, Title X reforms, the renewed Mexico City policy, and pro-life appointments to your administration have proven that you are a man of your word.

That is why I am coming to you as a key leader of the Pro-Life Generation as plans are underway for the next round of public policy choices in 2019. Planned Parenthood is the nation’s number one abortion vendor. Their marketing department is constantly scrambling to spin the story that abortion is not their #1 seller and that they are important for women’s healthcare. Both are false.

The vast majority of American women will never step into a Planned Parenthood facility in a given year. Nobody goes to Planned Parenthood for a flu shot. The health services they try to claim a monopoly on are better performed by Federally Qualified Health Centers. Compared to these community health centers, Planned Parenthood serves millions fewer patients, provides dozens fewer services, and spends their money far more inefficiently. Not to mention, they’re significantly outnumbered by health centers.

Yet Planned Parenthood receives over half a billion dollars of taxpayer money every year. The math just doesn’t add up.

Mr. President, pregnancy is not a disease cured by abortion. The time is right for your pro-life administration to keep your promises and defund Planned Parenthood across the board, redirecting those resources to places and programs that actually serve the medical needs of women and their families. Abortion is not healthcare.

Planned Parenthood has infiltrated too many programs and funding streams designed to help women and their children, born and preborn. For example, right now funds flow through Health and Human Services programs going to fetal tissue research, abusing the broken bodies of aborted infants. This is an offensive misuse of taxpayer funds that provides additional income to the abortion industry.

Planned Parenthood further misuses taxpayer dollars and public trust by funding pro-abortion politicians. In the 2016 election cycle, Planned Parenthood and its entities put almost $40 million into Democratic campaigns, while its then President Cecile Richards prominently supported your opponent. Planned Parenthood plays dirty politics with women’s lives and our taxpayer dollars.

Here is what the Pro-Life Generation asks of our President and his administration in the next two years and in a next term in office to affirm life in public policy:

1. Refuse to sign any budget that doesn’t defund Planned Parenthood where possible.

2. Formalize as quickly as possible the Protect Life rule for the Title X regulations as a starting point for separating abortion vendors like Planned Parenthood from family planning dollars.

3. Continue to appoint judges who respect life in law.

4. End the funding of fetal tissue research through Health and Human Services monies, as abortion vendors like Planned Parenthood earn additional monies by selling the broken bodies of aborted infants.

5. Sever the connection between sex education and abortion vendors through restrictions on federal grants where possible. Planned Parenthood should not be able to use sex education programs as their own person marketing slush fund, to instruct teens to buy their products and engage in behaviors they endorse, and then selling abortions to those same students when their advice and products fail.

Please support serving the needs of mothers and their children, born and preborn, by ensuring that the places receiving federal dollars treat everyone as a patient deserving of life. Planned Parenthood must be defunded so that we can better service women and their preborn children’s lives.

America doesn’t need Planned Parenthood.

Sincerely,

Kristan Hawkins,
President
Students for Life of America

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