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By Melanie Arter, CNSNews, February 7, 2018
(CNSNews.com) – If Congress votes to fund the government at current levels again this week through a continuing resolution (CR), it will also continue funding Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Pro-life groups are calling on Republican lawmakers to make good on their promise to defund Planned Parenthood.
When asked whether she supports Congress continuing to fund Planned Parenthood through a CR, American Life League President Judie Brown said, “Of course not. There’s no excuse for this, and I do not understand why we have such a weak-kneed Congress.
“I mean in one sense I do, because I don’t think that we have enough members of Congress who are truly interested in defunding Planned Parenthood in the first place, but secondly, all of the evidence that they have gotten, just setting aside everything else on the baby body parts industry, if they can’t gather the wherewithal to cut these people off, I don’t know what I can say,” Brown added.
Dr. Aleva King, director of Civil Rights for the Unborn for Priests for Life, told CNSNews.com, “I do not support continuing to fund Planned Parenthood through the continuing resolution. I don’t want to see a government shutdown but I also don’t want to see $1.5 million a day flowing to the nation’s largest abortion provider.
“My prayer is that Congress will fund community health centers but withdraw funding from any organization that makes its money from the blood of the innocents,” King said.
Operation Rescue President Troy Newman said, “I think it’s repulsive that Republicans would continue to fund Planned Parenthood through any sort of continuing resolution or baby body parts. Their director was forced to resign. Other abortionists have been convicted of various criminal activities, botched abortions, we’ve recorded again and again.
“And no taxpayer funding should ever go to fund such a horrific criminal enterprise like Planned Parenthood. The Republicans talk about shutting down the government over building a wall. I say the most worthy thing you can shut down the government for is to defund Planned Parenthood,” Newman said.
Tom McClusky, vice president of government affairs with the March for Life, told CNSNews.com, “Continuing Resolutions, omnibuses and mega two year budgets are what happens when Congress has been bipartisanly dysfunctional.
“For the first time in years the House of Representatives passed Appropriation bills through regular order – however the Senate could not be bothered. The result is a continuation of Obamacare and continued taxpayer funding of a billion dollar abortion industry. Once again making Congress, and taxpayers, culpable, for hundreds of thousands of abortions,” McClusky said in a statement.
During the March for Life last month, CNSNews.com asked David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, what he thinks about Congress voting to continue to fund the government and Planned Parenthood again through a CR.
“I think that Congress needs to abolish the filibuster and do what they’ve been promising to do for years now and strip taxpayer funding from Planned Parenthood’s abortion empire. They should just abolish the filibuster and do it now,” Daleiden said.
Concerned Women for America President Penny Nance told CNSNews.com during the March for Life last month, “I find it very disappointing of course, and I think that this administration is doing a lot of work through the regulatory state.”
On Jan. 24, the same day as the March for Life, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) was issuing “new guidance to state Medicaid directors restoring state flexibility to decide program standards.”
“Today they were talking about giving them the flexibility to states to choose who to give Medicaid dollars, and by the way, that’s the biggest pot of money that Planned Parenthood gets. Title X’s smaller,” Nance said at the time.
“Eighty percent of their government funds come from Medicaid, and so the states are now going to be able to decide … the states are going to be able to make better decisions on whether there’s co-mingling the funds, whether they want to make decisions based on co-location of a clinic versus people that are just doing exams and giving birth control and family planning help versus abortion,” she said.
“That is important while …a lot can be done through the regulatory state, but I strongly believe that Congress needs to step up and recognize that half a billion dollars a year in our tax dollars, the nation’s largest abortion provider, is wrong, and the American people do not support it,” Nance added.
https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/melanie-arter/pro-lifers-call-congress-not-continue-funding-planned-parenthood-through
