Several leaders from the most prominent pro life groups in the country met with President Donald Trump’s administration on Wednesday, encouraging the President to include the defunding of Planned Parenthood as a part of the budget bill.
Congress is pushing to come to an agreement and pass the budget bill by December 7th to avoid a government shutdown.
Live Action president Lila Rose, Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins, and representatives from the March for Life and the Susan B. Anthony List met with White House officials to push for pro-life goals, including defunding Planned Parenthood as President Trump promised on the campaign trail, before pro-abortion Democrats take control of the House in January.
The pro life advocates are urging President Trump to veto any budget bill that does not defund Planned Parenthood.
Towards the end of September of 2018, President Trump did sign a short-term spending bill that funded Planned Parenthood and had a continuing resolution to keep the government open through December 7th, in order to avoid a government shutdown. That means that thus far, despite the fact that President Trump has been in office for two years, and that Republicans had a majority in both houses of Congress, the Trump administration failed to uphold Trump’s campaign promises to defund Planned Parenthood. Prior to his signing of the short-term spending bill in late September the same pro life leaders urged President Trump to veto the bill.
In a statement when the first, short-term bill was under consideration, Live Action president Lila Rose said:
The American people were promised that they would no longer have to subsidize abortion, yet Congress is delivering a bill to the president’s desk that hands over half a billion dollars from taxpayers to Planned Parenthood, America’s biggest abortion chain.
This is a corporation whose own annual reporting proves that its focus is abortion, not women’s health care. Planned Parenthood has failed women, steadily losing hundreds of thousands of clients and closing over 200 of its facilities in the last 10 years. While it has focused on growing its abortion numbers by 11 percent over the last 10 years, its breast exams have decreased by 62 percent, its cervical cancer screenings by 74 percent, and its contraception services by 32 percent.
Planned Parenthood lies about the services it claims to provide, including prenatal care and mammograms; it covers up sexual abuse and sex trafficking of children, it fails to report rape and abuse of minors in order to secure more abortions; it discriminates against girls, defending sex-selective abortion for people who would rather have baby boys; and it is currently under federal investigation after employees were caught on camera haggling over prices for the body parts of babies they aborted.
The majority of Americans oppose federal funding of abortion providers. It is past time to stop the flow of taxpayer dollars into the abortion industry. The president has kept many of his pro-life promises, and we are asking him to keep this one. Veto this spending bill and any spending bill that funds a corporation that takes the lives of over 320,000 innocent preborn children every year.”
According to Townhall, Kristan Hawkins, President of Students for Life, wrote a letter to President Trump, arguing that, “The vast majority of American women will never step into a Planned Parenthood facility in a given year. 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. Yet Planned Parenthood receives over half a billion dollars of taxpayer money every year,” she added. “The math just doesn’t add up.”
