House Republicans are proposing to ax federal funding from Title X, a 40-year-old program signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1970 that provides a broad range of family planning services, but funnels millions toward abortion providers.
In a budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2016, the House Appropriations Labor-HHS Subcommittee released on Tuesday a plan to eliminate federal funding from the program. Planned Parenthood, Title X’s largest recipient, decried the effort, and claimed the proposed budget would have a “devastating” effect on women.
In a letter to Congress, Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards criticized the proposal.
“By cutting critical programs, such as the Title X Family Planning program, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention program, and international family planning and reproductive health programs…Congress is holding women, and our country, back,” Richards said.
Federal law prohibits abortion funding under the program, and notes that abortion cannot be provided among the scope of services bankrolled through the family planning initiative. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that the “broad range of services” required under Title X “does not include abortion as a method of family planning.” Paradoxical on its face, however, is the fact that Planned Parenthood is Title X’s largest beneficiary.
Live Action President Lila Rose embraced the proposal, calling the move “a welcome reform.”
“The proposed budget that cuts title X funding is a welcome reform to those who do not want their tax dollars going toward killing preborn children and underwriting the abortion industry. These funds directly pay for abortifacient drugs, fund mega abortion groups like Planned Parenthood and make it possible for abortion giants to promote pro abortion legislators and their anti-life agenda.”
An organization rooted and grounded in abortion cannot be trusted to relegate funds for services other than abortion. In fact, former Planned Parenthood Director Abby Johnson notes, “As clinic director, I saw how money received by Planned Parenthood affiliate clinics all went into one pot at the end of the day — it isn’t divvied up and directed to specific services.”
The federal government also provides Title X family planning funding to abortion providers and affiliated organizations in states that have laws on the books barring taxpayer dollars from funding abortion.
In January, lawmakers introduced the Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act to ensure that funds would not be used under the program to fund abortion.
Addressing the bill, lead sponsor Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) said the following:
“Planned Parenthood and organizations like it that profit off the destruction of innocent life do not deserve one more dime from American taxpayers…This legislation would simply clarify the original intent and spirit of the law to ensure that Title X federal funded grants will no longer be awarded to ‘health care’ providers that fail to protect life by providing abortions.”
Planned Parenthood’s mission is abortion, using the hard-earned monies of the American taxpayer in order to subsidize the killing of children. As the nation’s largest proponent of so-called “family planning services,” Planned Parenthood’s business model is to drive young women and mothers into a Planned Parenthood clinic for a future abortion.
A recent report released by the Government Accountability Office reveals that taxpayers were forced to send $1.5 billion to Planned Parenthood over a three-year period. Planned Parenthood, which received the lion’s share among six pro-abortion groups, took in about $1.2 billion from Medicaid, Medicare, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. Out of the total amount, Life News reports that the abortion giant received $201 million from the Title X family planning program, spending taxpayer dollars at both the state and federal level.
While GOP lawmakers have been working to defund Planned Parenthood, America’s largest abortion chain, they have been unsuccessful at zeroing federal funding from Title X. Lawmakers have, however, been able to chip away at the program’s budget by over $30 million since 2010.
