The Biden administration has awarded a grant to Planned Parenthood of Greater New York as part of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) harm reduction program, according to The Daily Caller. But there is no concrete information available on how that money will be spent.
SAMHSA documents show that 25 organizations were awarded a grant as part of SAMHSA’s Harm Reduction Grant Program. All of the organizations are dedicated to drug treatment or are government agencies — except for Planned Parenthood. The abortion corporation was awarded $398,960 — just shy of the maximum allowed amount of $400,000 — because it said it “seeks to expand its existing harm reduction model operating in New York City since 1988 to additional NYS communities in which we are already embedded as a trusted sexual and reproductive health care provider.”
That Planned Parenthood program is called Project Street Beat and the organization said the money will focus on Region 2 in Dutchess, Orange, and Ulster counties in upstate New York, where there has been an increase in opioid use. Project Street Beat offers some services for people struggling with drug addictions, including clean syringes, Narcan, and overdose prevention counseling, but it also focuses on STI screening and treatment, birth control, emergency contraception, and gynecologic care. The Daily Caller said neither SAMHSA nor Planned Parenthood of Greater New York responded to questions about how exactly the grant money will be spent.
READ: Senators demand answers about Planned Parenthood’s receipt of COVID-19 relief funds
In addition, there is concern that such drug overdose prevention programs do more harm than good. Actress Fiona Dourif shared that her mother died from a heroin overdose. In an op-ed for The Orange County Register, she noted that harm reduction programs are more like “addiction maintenance.” She wrote, “… with no mandated treatment, no required hospital care, these well-meaning programs of clean needles and anti-overdose drugs only serve to keep people sick. My mom, too, was delivered food, shelter, and clean needles to inject the heroin that killed her. What harm did that actually reduce?”
She continued, “A few days after my mother’s death, one of her many social workers called me sobbing, apparently having just found out my mom died. She kept crying ‘Not Joni! Not Joni!’ As I listened to her, I thought, ‘Of course Joni, what did you think was going to happen?'”
Planned Parenthood of Greater New York does not include any drug overdose reduction information in its most recent annual report, but it does mention abortion 12 times. Research published by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute in 2006 found a relationship between substance abuse and higher abortion rates. Women who reported the use of cigarettes, marijuana, or hard drugs at age 18 had an increased likelihood of unplanned pregnancy and abortion.
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