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The 3 Most Important Votes of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ Vote-a-Rama

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President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” moved closer to adoption overnight, as Senate Democrats attempted to load the bill with poison pill amendments in the “vote-a-rama.” During the lengthy amendment process, which began at 9 a.m. Monday morning and continues as of this writing, anyone may offer amendments to the 940-page bill. Senate changes have already made the bill less attractive to pro-life, pro-family conservatives. Yet the revised text also removes a controversial, 10-year moratorium on states regulating artificial intelligence.

“The president’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ is quickly losing its glamour in the Senate. The bill now appears to be a contestant in a beauty pageant for a tractor pull,” said FRC Action Chairman Tony Perkins. “The Senate version currently defunds big abortion providers like Planned Parenthood for only one year, instead of ten. That’s a huge disappointment. The first Senate version defunded gender transition procedures in Medicaid (not in Obamacare, as the House did, nor in Medicare or in the tax code, as had been proposed). But the current version will subject even that slimmed-down provision to a 60-vote threshold, meaning the provision will not pass the Senate, and Americans will continue to pay for gender transition experimentation on vulnerable individuals.”

Perkins wondered only if Senate Republican leaders were “completely out-muscled by the parliamentarian, or worse yet, didn’t try to secure the key components of the House version.” Senate GOP inaction “shows an unacceptable lack of political will.”

“Will senators fight to defund abortion providers for the maximum-allowable 10 years? Will they fight to defund gender procedures that bring trauma and life-long harm, or will they be satisfied with a show-vote on gender transition procedures?” asked Perkins.

Here are three of the most important votes that took place over the last 24 hours.

1. The Senate Continues to Defund Planned Parenthood

The Senate version of the bill reduced the 10-year defunding of Planned Parenthood to only one year. But overnight, the Senate narrowly voted down an amendment to strike down even that brief funding interlude, on a 51-49 vote. Two “pro-choice” Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted with the Democrats to fund the nation’s largest abortion business, which committed 402,230 abortions and received $792.2 million in taxpayer funding in 2024.

“The Republicans’ bill will cut millions of women off from birth control, cancer screenings, essential preventative health care — care they will not be able to afford anywhere else,” alleged Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “It will take another step towards enacting the Republicans’ plan for a backdoor nationwide abortion ban. How does it do this? By defunding Planned Parenthood.” Republicans, she said, were “happy to cut off this life-saving care.”

But Kristen Day, executive director of Democrats for Life, rebutted the talking point. “Defunding Planned Parenthood is not one of them. Community Health Centers and Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) provide comprehensive healthcare, and there are more of them!” she said. “Let’s fully fund real healthcare.”

“Senate Democrats just failed in their attempt to remove the meager tip (10%) that Senate Republicans were offering to the taxpayers and pro-life Americans,” said Perkins.

Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America said, “Let me be clear: Defunding Planned Parenthood for one year would be one small step that we celebrate, while we will still fight for all those at risk by the Abortion Goliath’s predatory & violent business. One giant leap would be full debarment.”

2. Senate Nixes the 10-year Moratorium on States Regulating Artificial Intelligence (AI)

On a nearly unanimous vote, the Senate adopted a bipartisan amendment from Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to eliminate the One Big Beautiful Bill’s controversial, 10-year moratorium on AI regulation. If enacted, the provision would have struck down an estimated 75 existing state laws and barred any further protections for the next decade, including laws against AI-generated child pornography.

Blackburn and Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had sought a compromise that would reduce the decade-long federal ban on state AI regulations to five years and allow states to protect children from exploitation, and safeguard people’s images and likenesses, provided those regulations did not impose an “undue or disproportionate burden” on artificial intelligence. “Find you a senator who looks at defunding gender transition procedures the way Ted Cruz looks at protecting AI,” joked Quena González, senior director of Government Affairs at Family Research Council, on social media.

But Blackburn eventually broke with Cruz, saying the proposed compromise did not do enough for “those who need these protections the most. This provision could allow Big Tech to continue to exploit kids, creators, and conservatives. Until Congress passes preemptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can’t block states from making laws that protect their citizens.” On the House floor, Blackburn listed a litany of AI regulations Congress had failed to pass, which states have adopted. On Friday, 17 Republican governors urged congressional leaders to strike the AI moratorium, saying it “threatens to undo all the work states have done to protect our citizens from the misuse of artificial intelligence.”

Cruz withdrew his amendment a little after 4 a.m. Tuesday, paving the way for the House to adopt Blackburn’s amendment on a strongly bipartisan basis: 99-1. Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) cast the lone no vote.

3. Democrats Extend Taxpayer-Funded Benefits to Criminal Illegal Immigrants

Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) offered an amendment that would have reduced federal Medicaid funding to states that cover illegal immigrants charged with serious crimes. Under Senate parliamentary procedure, the measure needed to clear a 60-vote threshold but passed with only 56 votes. One Republican, Susan Collins of Maine, voted against the measure. Meanwhile, five Democratic senators voted in favor: Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Catherine Cortez-Masto of Nevada, and Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock of Georgia. “Illegal aliens should be on a flight back to their home country, not on Medicaid (funded by American taxpayers)!!!” said Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas). On Monday, the Senate rejected an amendment from Blackburn that would have prevented states from allowing illegal immigrants to enroll in Medicaid.

The Senate also rebuffed numerous attempts to maintain or further extend Green New Deal tax credits and subsidies. Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) spoke in opposition to many of the measures, branding taxpayer funding of “mature industries” as “wasteful.”

House conservatives laid much of the blame for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s lost beauty at the footsteps of Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough, a former Al Gore adviser. “The Senate parliamentarian over the last few days has said that a lot of our deficit reduction measures were invalid under the Byrd rule. They’ll have to be changed and modified,” Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) told “Washington Watch” regular guest host Jody Hice on Friday. Many have asked for the Senate to overrule the parliamentarian, something Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has repeatedly and recently refused to do. “I’ve asked for her to be fired. I don’t know why you would be the Republican leader of the Senate and have a parliamentarian who was hired by Harry Reid 12 years ago,” Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) told “Washington Watch” Monday.

House conservatives said changing the original text of the bill too much risks upsetting the key agreements that allowed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to pass the House, where Republicans also hold only a three-vote majority. “It was a very carefully negotiated compromise. And as they wander away from that, it becomes less and less likely that it’s going to succeed when it comes back out to the House,” said Harris. “We want this to succeed. We want President Trump to succeed. But the safest thing they could do is take our House bill and just pass it the way we pass it, or make some very small changes.”

“If they try to send it over to the House with a large increase in the budget deficit, then I think we’re going to have to go back to the drawing board,” warned Harris.

House leaders want the bill to meet President Trump’s deadline of July 4, making a speedy House vote likely. “I’ve been talking with [Senate Majority] Leader Thune constantly through the process and with individual senators, encouraging them to change the House product as little as possible,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) told “This Week on Capitol Hill” Saturday.

“I will have to wait about 72 hours for the bill to lay over before we can vote. But the plan would be if it’s in shape that we could use it,” said Johnson. A prompt House vote “would also allow for the president to have a big, beautiful bill signing on Independence Day. And I certainly hope we can keep that deadline.”

As the Senate nears a final text, senators on both sides of the aisle can agree on one thing: They want the nearly day-long marathon known as “vote-a-rama,” to end. “It’s like an all-night party, but without the party,” quipped Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.

“I just want to go home,” agreed Senator John Fetterman (D-Penn.). “I’ve already missed our entire trip to the beach.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

EXCLUSIVE: Planned Parenthood Used Your Tax Dollars To Train Educators That Biological Sex Is A ‘Myth’

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America’s eighth-largest school district handed taxpayer cash to Planned Parenthood to train teachers that biological sex is a “myth,” according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Philadelphia School District (PSD), which oversees almost 200,000 students, paid Planned Parenthood Southeastern Pennsylvania (PPSP) nearly $40,000 in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) HIV grant funds to provide up to 70 trainings which decry biological sex as a “myth,” support medical child sex-changes and normalize men in women’s sports, according to documents obtained by the DCNF through a public records request. Planned Parenthood delivered Comprehensive Sexual Education to more than 1.3 million participants during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, according to its latest annual report, dubbing itself as America’s “largest” sex education provider.

“Too many people remain unaware that Planned Parenthood has become a primary player in the youth gender industry and uses schools as the vehicle into the minds of children,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Defending Education, told the DCNF. “This is already unacceptable on its face but the fact that they’re using federal dollars to promote these ideologies and lie about the long-term consequences of medicalization is reprehensible.”

PPSP contracted with the PSD to provide 14 unique sexual education trainings for teachers and students in grades 4-12, on topics such as creating a “safe space” for LGBT youth at school, “debunking myths” about child sex-changes and teaching “self-advocacy” to LGBT youth, documents show. The DCNF obtained slideshows from the presentations, revealing Philadelphia teachers are being trained to reinforce the gender-confusion of students and push youth towards obtaining medical sex-changes.

The funds for PPSP were derived from a $2.6 million dollar multi-year CDC grant for a school-based HIV prevention program, awarded to PSD in 2018.

PSD did not provide a comment in time for publication. The CDC and PPSP did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

Slides from a Planned Parenthood school training titled, “Debunking Myths about Gender-Affirming Care,” obtained from the Philadelphia School District via Public Records Request.

A PPSP teacher training titled “Debunking Myths about Gender-Affirming Care,” “debunks” what it claims to be “myths” about child sex-changes, such as “most people regret having gender-affirming surgery or medical interventions,” “kids are too young to know they’re trans or non binary” and “gender-affirming care is dangerous,” documents show.

The presentation incorrectly calls puberty blockers, which cause infertility, bone density loss and may impair brain development, “fully reversible,” and states child sex-change medical interventions are “life saving and life enabling.” A review published by the Trump administration in May 2025 found the child sex-change medical industry is built on junk science that lacks ethical justification.

Planned Parenthood is “wrong” to cast child-sex changes as safe and reversible, Dr. Kurt Miceli, medical director at the watchdog organization Do No Harm, told the DCNF.

“Planned Parenthood is wrong in its portrayal of so-called ‘gender-affirming care’ in minors. Multiple systematic reviews show that the quality of evidence for these interventions is incredibly weak,” Miceli told the DCNF. “The harms, on the other hand, are very real and serious. The risks range from infertility to surgical complications and regret. These interventions negatively impact bone health and cause cardiovascular disease, too. The experimental and harmful effects on youth are no myth and can’t be ignored.”  

PPSP provides sex-change hormone therapy through in-person and remote telehealth appointments to patients over 18, directing minors seeking sex-change hormone therapy to contact the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Gender and Sexuality Development Program, according to its website. A training on medical child sex-changes lists the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who Do No Harm calls the “worst-offending” children’s hospitals in the country for “promoting sex change treatments for minors,” as a “local resource” for educators.

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

Planned Parenthood claims biological sex is a “myth” and explains the importance of providing students with “gender-neutral” locker rooms and bathrooms in a teacher training titled “How to Make Your Classroom a Safe Space for LGBTQIA+ Students.” Teachers are further instructed to fill their classrooms with LGBT imagery, interrupt “transphobic” behavior and advocate for school-wide “queer positive” sexual education.

PPSP addresses the hot button topic of male “transgender” athletes competing in girls sports in the same training, stating there is “no research” to support males having an advantage over females in sports. It states that research supports that a “lack of athletic opportunities in schools,” which transgender activists say occurs when males are denied access to girls sports, is an “actual” threat to students.

A slide presentation titled, “How to Make Your Classroom a Safe Space for LGBTQIA+ Students,” obtained from the Philadelphia School District via Public Records Request.

In a PPSP training titled “Teaching Digital Decision-Making, Media Literacy and Safety,” teachers were warned they might be exposed to “transphobia,” “misogyny” and “bullying,” when reviewing a series of tweets, including those authored by J.K. Rowling, that questioned the legitimacy of Imane Khelif, an allegedly male boxer, participating in female sports, documents show.

Khelif controversially won the 2024 Summer Olympics female gold medal in the boxing competition. In March 2023, Khelif was excluded from participating in the International Boxing Association (IBA) women’s events after a series of blood tests showed Khelif failed to meet its definition of a woman, according to the IBA website. The IBA wrote a letter to the International Olympic Committee in June 2023 and expressed concerns over the safety of female boxers if forced to compete with Khelif.

A PPSP student media literacy training asked youth to identify “red flags,” defined as content on social media that is exclusionary, prejudiced or providing false information. Students were asked to find the “red flag” when provided with a photo of a pregnant “man” and a statement that only biological women can get pregnant, documents show.

A PPSP training titled “Self Advocacy For LGBTQ+ Youth” encouraged students to embrace “coming out” and to be supportive of medically transitioning “transgender” friends.

Slides in a media literacy training obtained from the Philadelphia School District via Public Records Request.

In its 2023-2024 Annual Report, PPSP praised its partnership with PSD, saying it has trained 627 teachers and staff to “cultivate shame-free schools.”

AUTHOR

Megan Brock

Investigative Reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permisison. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Planned Parenthood Committed 402,230 Abortions, Received $792.2 Million in Taxpayer Funding in 2024

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House Republicans seeking to end federal funding of abortion businesses received two enormous boosts to their efforts on Monday, as a legislative provision inched closer to adoption and Planned Parenthood released an annual report showing it received more taxpayer funding than any time in history. The report has pro-life experts telling The Washington Stand, “Planned Parenthood must be defunded.”

Planned Parenthood committed 402,230 abortions and received $792.2 million in taxpayer funding in 2024, according to its 2024 annual report, released Monday. Last year, U.S. taxpayers became Planned Parenthood’s largest financial contributor, supplying 39% of the organization’s $2 billion in revenue — up from 34% in the last report.

“Planned Parenthood carries out over 1,100 abortions per day and receives over $2 million a day in taxpayer funding. This should absolutely disgust Americans. Our hard-earned dollars should not be going towards the slaughter of innocent unborn children. The federal government must end this horrific use of funds,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “It’s past time for Congress to say, ‘American taxpayers will not be forced to pad the wallets of Planned Parenthood executives while women receive shoddy treatment in unsanitary conditions and their unborn children are killed.’”

“Planned Parenthood must be defunded,” Szoch remarked.

Planned Parenthood had net revenue of $2 billion and ended the year with total net assets of $2.52 billion. More than a dozen Planned Parenthood executives make more money than Anthony Fauci. Yet financial data remain murky, co-mingling multiple years and not including all affiliates.

The report indicates a massive increase in both abortions and taxation extraction since last year. Planned Parenthood committed 392,712 abortions and received a $699.3 million in 2023. Taxpayers were “forced to give them a 13% increase in funding while most of America received only a 3 to 5% increase,” SFLAction President Kristan Hawkins told TWS via email. The abortion business carried out 374,155 abortions and received $670.4 million in taxpayer funding during its 2021-2022 fiscal year — itself an increase of 9,252 abortions over pre-Dobbs levels.

“Leave it to Planned Parenthood to reveal their billions of dollars in abortion income on the heels of Mother’s Day weekend,” observed American Life League (ALL) Director Katie Brown Xavios. Planned Parenthood’s actions “included 402,230 abortions, sex education for young children, cross sex hormone distribution, and of course, the distribution of the deadly abortion pill.” ALL noted the report did not specify the number of abortions carried out by telehealth medication abortion.

Planned Parenthood increased its promotion of transgender procedures, primarily cross-sex hormone injections, introducing “Virtual Health Centers” at 23 Planned Parenthood affiliates. But as it did last year, Planned Parenthood lumped in the number of “transgender services” with “other procedures,” which fell dramatically to 77,858 from 177,237 in the 2023 report.

At least one Planned Parenthood affiliate has begun advertising transgender surgeries. “Planned Parenthood also offers some gender affirming surgeries to patients in the St. Louis area and refers to other providers when needed,” proclaims Planned Parenthood Great Rivers (PPGR) in Missouri.

“For yet another year, pregnant women seeking help at Planned Parenthood are sold an abortion 97% of the time, while prenatal services, miscarriage care and adoption referrals make up a minuscule minority of the options they offer. Meanwhile their priorities include their assault on parental rights, transgender ‘treatments’ and political spending to defeat Republicans,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America told TWS. “This report heightens the urgency to defund Big Abortion and stop forcing taxpayers to fund an industry that destroys unborn lives and preys on women and girls.”

Planned Parenthood employs 90 “patient navigators” whose actions “potentially break laws in pro-life states,” noted SFLAction.

Yet the “health care provider” reduced its health care services sharply since last year: Cancer screenings decreased 8.1%, pap tests fell 12.3%, and primary care visits declined by 13.7%, according to Michael New, a professor at The Catholic University of America.

Planned Parenthood: Undergoing STI Testing Is a Time of ‘Hope’

The nation’s largest abortion business styled its work as inspiring hope. “Every time a patient walks through the doors of a Planned Parenthood health center, it is an act of hope,” begins Planned Parenthood’s annual report. “Every time someone … goes with their partner for STI testing, they are filled with hope that the future they plan is possible.”

The report boasts of its ties to partisan political figures in the Democratic Party, noting Democrat Kamala Harris became the first sitting vice president to visit an abortion business, choosing a Minnesota Planned Parenthood. It vows to continue its activism “to educate people about sexual and reproductive health and rights” — a concept Planned Parenthood believes endows all American minors and illegal immigrants with the right to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy, as well as transgender procedures.

Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson also vowed Planned Parenthood will continue to promote “abortion care” to “communities of color, low-income communities, those without documentation.” Her promise would cheer Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist who once attended a Ku Klux Klan rally. “That’s who Planned Parenthood is and who we’ll continue to be,” promised Johnson.

House Committee Moves to Defund Planned Parenthood

The report came as the House Energy and Commerce (E&C) Committee, chaired by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), approved language to end federal funding to any entity that carries out abortions. On Monday, 183 legislators from almost every state urged Congress to defund Planned Parenthood.

“We commend our House Republican allies for working hard on a budget reconciliation process that finally gets taxpayers out of the abortion business and we encourage them to persevere,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America told TWS. “Now more than ever, we can hardly wait to see the ‘one big beautiful bill’ advance in Congress.”

Yet defunding efforts are reportedly opposed by Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Penn.), Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.), and Jen Kiggans (R-Va.).

“Demanding that Americans prop up an organization that sells wrong-sex hormone treatments, that sterilizes minors, and that ends precious lives in the womb violates the consciences of many Americans,” Hawkins told TWS. “Planned Parenthood is a case study in how access to power equals wealth, and for those in the GOP who are inclined to support them, remember at election time they are coming for you!”

Until the bill passes, pro-life advocates vowed to fight on. “The fight isn’t over,” said an email sent Monday night by FRC Action, urging recipients to take action. “In fact, it’s really just begun.”

“As Congress looks to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, it’s high time that we end taxpayer funding of gender transition procedures and abortion providers,” says the FRC Action letter.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Pornhub Staff Worried About Going To Jail For Child Porn Downloaded From Their Company’s Own Website, Docs Show

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PornHub let child pornography sit untouched on its website for years, including content one employee admitted would put him behind bars “for a long time” if it was found on his computer, discovery documents released in error reveal.

Internal messages, emails and memos from around 2020 reveal the company struggling to clear child pornography from its website while executives debated measures to crack down and staff tasked with removing it made light of the situation.

The documents, first reported by the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof, are part of discovery in an Alabama class action lawsuit brought by child sex trafficking victims who allege PornHub’s parent company MindGeek financially profited from distributing videos depicting their abuse.

“You guys want to laugh,” one staff member wrote in an April 7, 2020 message. “[I]t caught a cp [child pornography] video from 2009…a full on cp video on the site for 11 years.”

At one point, one staff member was told not to include a superior on child sexual abuse material (CSAM) report emails.

“He doenst wnat [sic] to know how much cp we have ignored for the past 5 years?” the employee responded.

Aylo, formerly known as MindGeek, told the DCNF its policy is not to comment on ongoing litigation to respect the “integrity of court proceedings.”

“We look forward to the facts being fully and fairly aired in that forum,” the company told the DCNF.

However, the company did state it has “instituted some of the most comprehensive safeguards in user-generated platform history in order to mitigate the ability of bad actors to abuse our platform and post unwanted material.”

‘I Hope I Never Get In Trouble’

One discovery document tracking keywords shows the phrases “12yo” and “13yo” resulted in 155,447 videos each on the website, while the term “7yo” yielded 5,387 results. Other tracked terms include “girls under18” with 146,248 videos and “Degraded Teen” at 1,537.

One memo suggesting words that should be banned notes the term “infant” resulted in 764 videos. Yet terms like “childhood,” included 1,519 video descriptions, or “forced,” included in 548,697 descriptions, are not recommended to be banned.

“I hope I never get in trouble for having those vids on my computer LOOOOL,” one staff member wrote in a March 2020 message.

“I found one yesterday night…that i had forgotton to delete…and it was a really bad one…like i will go away for a long time,” another staff member replied.

The first employee suggested that MindGeek would “vouch for us if we every [sic] get arrested.”

The word “teen” has at times ranked among the website’s top search terms, according to company reports. Some email exchanges show executives unsure of what words to ban.

In June 2017, an executive suggested blocking the term “rapped” but allowing the term “young girl.”

Around May 2020, there were more than 706,000 videos flagged by users for underage content or other terms of service violations, according to internal emails. A video would only be prioritized for removal at the time if it had been flagged more than 15 times.

Similar figures were also included in emails released as part of discovery in a class action lawsuit filed against MindGeek in California, which Justice Defense Fund CEO Laila Mickelwait shared in 2023 on X.

In June 2020, a company leader acknowledged they had previously not been “enforcing strict rules” for staff who failed to block violations.

“Now older mistakes are found and many will continue to be found from the 700k backlog and if I go ahead and enforce the strict/rules guidelines we will lose a significant amount of our agents and cause chaos within the team,” a member of leadership wrote.

Pornhub removed more than 10 million videos from its website in December 2020 after the NYT reported instances of child sexual abuse material on the website.

The company also announced that it had “banned unverified uploaders from posting new content, eliminated downloads, and partnered with dozens of non-profit organizations” as part of its new safeguards.

Other safeguards Aylo told the DCNF it has implemented include “an uploader verification program that uses secure biometric facial recognition technology to ensure the identity of the uploader of all pieces of content,” “utilization of digital fingerprinting technology to prevent the re-upload of unauthorized material,” and “a constantly evolving banned keyword list that disallows searches for more than 60,000 words and phrases in multiple languages.”

Mickelwait said the documents reveal PornHub went “far beyond negligence.”

“It was systemic criminal conduct—monetized sexual abuse on an industrial scale, driven by willful corporate decisions,” Mickelwait said in a statement Saturday. “These newly released documents confirm what survivors have long known: Pornhub executives knew they were distributing child rape—and they chose profits over children’s lives.”

AUTHOR

Katelynn Richardson

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: PornHub Is Now Inaccessible In Texas

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

PERKINS: For Congress, This Tick Tock Is Not about an App

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If you already battle high blood pressure, you may want to skip this next exercise. But for the rest of us, open a browser to USDebtClock.org and watch the neon-red digits spin faster than Reverend Al Sharpton when a TV camera blinks on. In the next few minutes, the display will rise by roughly $40 million, pushing the debt far beyond $36 trillion and accelerating toward $37 trillion. That’s more than $265,000 for every American household. And every added dollar is another chain of bondage for our children and grandchildren, a silent tax on their freedom and future.

Why the relentless rise? One reason is the waste, like that exposed last week by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. His report confirms that President Joe Biden’s 2021 withdrawal left the Taliban with 78 aircraft, 40,000 military vehicles, and more than 300,000 weapons — hardware American taxpayers bought for roughly $25 billion. Terrorists are now better armed than when we entered Afghanistan in 2001, funded with borrowed money

That was the Biden administration. Surely Republican leadership will reverse course — right? Not so fast. Keep your eye on that spinning debt clock.

Congress is assembling what the president calls the “one, big, beautiful bill,” a massive budget reconciliation package that needs only 51 Senate votes. Reconciliation is a rare chance to rein in spending and strip out policies that violate the GOP’s professed values —v alues that have grown hazy in the absence of a formal platform but still generally include protecting life, safeguarding children, and practicing fiscal restraint.

Yet about 20 House Republicans are threatening to torpedo the entire bill unless Planned Parenthood — the nation’s largest abortion business — continues to receive roughly $700 million a year in fresh taxpayer funding. Let that sink in: self-described pro-life lawmakers are ready to keep borrowing from your grandchildren to bankroll an organization that Congress has investigated for trafficking in baby body parts, an organization repeatedly accused of shielding sexual predators from justice.

With chemical-abortion pills now accounting for as many as two-thirds of all abortions, Planned Parenthood is eyeing its next profit center: cross-sex hormones and other so-called “gender-affirming” drugs — even for minors.

Do you really want your federal tax dollars underwriting permanent medical harm to confused children?

Here’s the bottom line: Planned Parenthood is not in the business of saving lives; it is in the business of ending or permanently altering them — about 400,000 last year alone. A Republican White House and a Republican-led Congress have zero moral or fiscal justification for sending one more dime its way.

So pray for courage — and then pick up the phone. Tell your representative to pass a reconciliation bill that cuts spending, protects the unborn, and refuses to subsidize Planned Parenthood. The debt clock is ticking, and so is the conscience of the nation.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

PERKINS: Taxpayer Funds Should Respect the Will of the People

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A House DOGE subcommittee put a magnifying glass to NPR and PBS, funded in part with federal tax dollars through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The most recent budget shows that the two left-leaning media outlets rake in just shy of $550 million a year from taxpayers.

DOGE’s triad is waste, fraud, and abuse. An obvious issue lawmakers are debating in this age of multi-media — and our unprecedented $36 trillion of national debt — is whether the government’s funding of these broadcasts is a waste of taxpayer dollars. That’s a legitimate question. Add to that concern the abuse of left-leaning viewpoints, like NPR’s promotion of genderqueer dinosaur enthusiasts and the fact that there isn’t a single identified Republican working at NPR at the national level, and you can understand the growing concerns about the abuse of taxpayer dollars.

In addition to direct funding, NPR and PBS also enjoy various federal carve-outs that give them competitive advantages over other news providers. Many believe the government should keep its thumb off the First Amendment’s scale and force NPR and PBS to stand on their own — free of federal subsidies.

Yet, the starkest example of waste, fraud, and abuse may be found in the abortion industry — particularly at Planned Parenthood, which surpasses NPR and PBS in the scope of public funding and controversy.

Let’s Talk about Waste:

  • After the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, Planned Parenthood reportedly raised nearly $500 million. Instead of using that money for health care services at their clinics, which the group claims is their priority, much of it went toward the organization’s political and legal interests.
  • Meanwhile, $699 million in taxpayer funds supported their clinics, where patient numbers have been steadily declining even as abortion procedures have risen.
  • According to The New York Times, Planned Parenthood has spent millions on CEO salaries, such as their national president, Alexis Johnson, whose annual salary in 2023 was $904,000. At the same time, very little funding was allocated to staff training — leading to incidents such as botched IUD placements and abortions.
  • I’m not alone in insisting that taxpayers shouldn’t be bankrolling the million-dollar salary of the CEO who heads the nation’s largest baby-killing operation. Even after the abortion lobby spent hundreds of millions of dollars after Roe fell, 60% of Americans still oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.

Let’s Talk Fraud:

  • Planned Parenthood has repeatedly faced allegations of trafficking fetal tissue — “baby body parts” — for profit.
  • There are also multiple reports suggesting Planned Parenthood has covered up criminal behavior and sexual abuse involving the very women it claims to serve.

Abuse?

  • The organization is increasingly pivoting toward so-called “gender-affirming” hormone therapy, including for minors — something many states are trying to prevent for their young residents.
  • Ultimately, it’s an abuse of taxpayer dollars to subsidize an entity involved in taking the lives of 400,000 unborn Americans.

Here is the bottom line: Our leaders should foster true neutrality in public funding and respect the will of citizens who object to financing controversial practices. It’s time to end all government funding for organizations like Planned Parenthood that are killing America’s opportunity to be great again.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Proclaiming Life: That No More Generations May Be Lost

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This Wednesday, January 22, 2025, is the 52nd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. Less than three years ago, a changed court reversed the abortion decisions in the Dobbs case. On the ground, however, the toll of abortion in the United States remains high, fueled by unlimited abortion in a number of states and an evolution in abortion procedures via the distribution of the abortion drug mifepristone with few health standards and requirements, as prescribed by the U.S Food and Drug Administration.

January 22 is also just the third day of the second administration of Donald J. Trump. President Trump enters office in a somewhat different posture from that of his first term in 2017. The president’s stance on abortion is considerably different from what it was eight years ago, with his stated pledge to veto any federal ban on abortion, opposition to the most protective pro-life laws in the states, and avowed intention not to alter the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill.

There remain, however, a number of actions that Congress and the president can take to reinstate pro-life policies from his first term, particularly on domestic and international abortion funding, conscience rights for pro-life doctors and entities, child tax credits, and funding for the massive abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

What might this week bring in terms of administration statements on abortion? What does history tell us about the expressed convictions of avowedly pro-life presidents, of whom we have had four from 1981 to the present? A quick scan of the dozens of executive orders issued by President Trump so far shows a few that may have pro-life implications, particularly the 90-day pause in foreign assistance to permit a review of their consistency with America First goals. A second action with pro-life import is the announced withdrawal of the United States from the thoroughly pro-abortion World Health Organization, whose actions hostile to human life have been described in a prior article in this space.

President Trump has repeatedly said in the past few days that more actions are coming. Given that this week brings both the anniversary of Roe v. Wade and the national March for Life (January 24), what else might the new administration do to highlight its position on the sanctity of human life? In addition to policy steps, the traditional means for these expressions include attendance by the president or senior administration officials at pro-life events or, more commonly, the issuance of a Presidential Proclamation declaring National Sanctity of Human Life Day. The latter form of support for a pro-life nation has been consistent since the practice was initiated by President Ronald Reagan in 1984.

So what is a presidential proclamation? These documents are signed by the president and can be issued at any time during the year, usually to commemorate a particular observance. They are typically done at the request of one or both houses of Congress, which adopt a resolution urging the president to recognize a special period.

Some proclamations are annual and others are one-off occasions, owing to the unique nature of the observance or the natural limit on proclamations — which is to say, the White House typically prefers not to dilute these commemoratives by issuing them on multiple topics day after day (the average number of proclamations issued for the past three decades is 143 per year). Proclamations can honor such observances as National Down Syndrome Awareness Month or less weighty matters such as National Ice Cream Month and National Ice Cream Day (in July, naturally).

In contrast, the Presidential Proclamations for National Sanctity of Human Life Day have a far more substantive history. First, of course, the proclamations are not lawmaking or policy-setting. They are vision statements, setting forth the principles that guide a president’s actions, from executive orders, to policy memoranda, to legislative proposals, to presidential personnel, and more.

Since 1984, when the first presidential proclamation on abortion was issued by Ronald Reagan, there has been a total of 22 such proclamations issued by four chief executives: Reagan, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Donald J. Trump. The issuances have been remarkably consistent. Each Republican president has issued an annual proclamation covering his four or eight years in office. No Democratic president has ever issued one. Because they are not policy documents per se (though they may express a view), the proclamations are not rescinded by subsequent presidents but remain as persuasive documents of a hortatory character.

The first National Sanctity of Human Life Proclamation was promulgated on January 13, 1984, and it designated January 22, 1984, the 11th anniversary of Roe, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. Unlike most presidential proclamations, this one was not requested by congressional resolution. Rather, the idea was originated by the Rev. Curtis J. Young, at that time the executive director of the Christian Action Council (CAC), the forerunner of Care Net, one of the largest pregnancy center networks in the United States. Young led the establishment of scores of pregnancy centers and is the author of “The Least of These: What Everyone Should Know About Abortion,” one of the first books to make the compelling case for life from a biblical, moral, and social perspective. The CAC was in its first years a policy and communications group, founded by a coalition of distinguished evangelical leaders such as the Rev. Billy Graham, C. Everett Koop, and Harold O.J. Brown. That first date for the observance fell on a Sunday and one goal was to foster recollection, prayer, and action within the churches about the value of every human life.

Now, 41 years later, this tradition of presidential proclamations continues to serve a high purpose. Each of the four presidents who have followed the tradition has had a distinct style, but there is much in common among the documents. President Reagan’s first proclamation, No. 5147, went directly to the nation’s founding document: “The values and freedoms we cherish as Americans rest on our fundamental commitment to the sanctity of human life. The first of the ‘unalienable rights’ affirmed by our Declaration of Independence is the right to life itself, a right the Declaration states has been endowed by our Creator on all human beings — whether young or old, weak or strong, healthy or handicapped.” As has become standard in the proclamations, Reagan called “upon the citizens of this blessed land to gather on that day in homes and places of worship to give thanks for the gift of life, and to reaffirm our commitment to the dignity of every human being and the sanctity of each human life.”

Reagan issued a similar proclamation each of the following five years of his presidency, hailing the new achievements in perinatal care, praising abortion alternatives, and calling for legal protections at every level of government for the unborn. His 1988 Proclamation, the second to last of his time in office, was particularly notable. Tracking the language of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, Reagan’s text came to be called a “proclamation of personhood” for the unborn. He wrote:

“Our Nation cannot continue down the path of abortion, so radically at odds with our history, our heritage, and our concepts of justice. This sacred legacy, and the well-being and the future of our country, demand that protection of the innocents must be guaranteed and that the personhood of the unborn be declared and defended throughout our land. In legislation introduced at my request in the First Session of the 100th Congress, I have asked the Legislative branch to declare the ‘humanity of the unborn child and the compelling interest of the several states to protect the life of each person before birth.’ This duty to declare on so fundamental a matter falls to the Executive as well. By this Proclamation I hereby do so.”

The next four proclamations were issued by George H. W. Bush, and they evince a similar spirit. In his 1990 proclamation, President Bush hailed our nation’s spectrum of concern to preserve and protect vulnerable lives, whatever the threat. He championed the scientists and physicians providing care and seeking cures, promoted adoption, and cited the Declaration. He wrote: “On this day, we also thank God for the advances in medicine that have improved the care of unborn children in the womb and premature babies. These scientific advances reinforce the belief that unborn children are persons, entitled to medical care and legal protection.”

The next presidential elections brought the Clinton years and pitched battles over the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Winning the fight for this limit on a particularly grotesque form of abortion, that destroys a living baby by crushing its skull and vacuuming out its brains, fell to President Bush’s son, George W. Bush. In the last of his eight annual proclamations on National Sanctity of Human Life Day, the younger Bush recited his considerable accomplishments in signing into law the ban on partial-birth abortions, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act protecting the right to life of the child in the womb, and the original Born Alive Infants Protection Act.

He wrote in the proclamation’s first words: “All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us.”

President Trump sustained these commitments in his Proclamations on National Sanctity of Human Life Day from 2018 to 2021. He called on Congress to act to limit late-term abortion and poetically ended his proclamation stating: “Today, I call on the Congress to join me in protecting and defending the dignity of every human life, including those not yet born. I call on the American people to continue to care for women in unexpected pregnancies and to support adoption and foster care in a more meaningful way, so every child can have a loving home. And finally, I ask every citizen of this great Nation to listen to the sound of silence caused by a generation lost to us, and then to raise their voices for all affected by abortion, both seen and unseen.”

With these beautiful words, the tradition of presidential proclamations on behalf of life has reached a new shore of opportunity, one in which we can move toward a golden age of protection for our young.

Here are links to all 22 of these statements of principle: 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

AUTHOR

Chuck Donovan

Chuck Donovan served in the Reagan White House as a senior writer and as Deputy Director of Presidential Correspondence until early 1989. He was executive vice president of Family Research Council, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, and founder/president of Charlotte Lozier Institute from 2011 to 2024. He has written and spoken extensively on issues in life and family policy.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Senators Express Optimism That Trump Will Restore Pro-Life Policies at HHS

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Following four years of the Biden administration reversing the pro-life federal policies established during President Donald Trump’s first term, Republican senators are expressing confidence that the incoming Trump administration will put back in place policies that blocked federal funds from going to abortion businesses, allowed pregnancy resource centers to receive federal funds, and stopped the funding of international groups that promote abortion, among other measures.

After Trump nominated former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to serve as his secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) last November, concerns arose among numerous GOP lawmakers and pro-life advocacy groups that the former Democrat-turned-Independent presidential nominee would sideline pro-life policies based on his past pro-abortion positions. During his presidential run, Kennedy has called the abortion issue “nuanced and complex” and also said that the state should not “dictate choices that the woman is making” regarding abortion. He has also previously supported (and walked back support for) three-month pro-life protections.

However, Senate Republicans like Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) say they have received personal assurances from Kennedy that he will not pursue pro-abortion policies while in office and will, in fact, enact pro-life ones. Last month, Hawley posted a series of tweets describing his conversation with Kennedy regarding the issue. “He committed to me to reinstate President Trump’s prolife policies at HHS,” Hawley wrote. “That includes reinstating the Mexico City policy & ending taxpayer funding for abortions domestically.”

The senator further noted Kennedy’s promise to have all pro-life deputies at HHS and that he “believes there are far too many abortions in the US and that we cannot be the moral leader of the free world with abortion rates so high.” Hawley also stated that Kennedy promised to reinstate “the bar on Title X funds going to organizations that promote abortion” and to “reinstate conscience protections for healthcare providers.”

During Tuesday’s edition of “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins,” Senator Steve Daines (R-Mont.) confirmed that he too met with Kennedy and also received assurances from him that he would pursue pro-life policies within the federal agency.

“We had a very robust discussion,” he explained. “In fact, talking about the importance of protecting the pro-life policies in terms of regulations coming out of HHS, but importantly, restoring any policies that the Biden administration has stripped, and to … work with the secretary of State [to ensure] we are doing all we can within the executive branch to make sure these protections are in place and, frankly, expanded. And he told me that he’ll have seven [deputies in] HHS [that] would be pro-life type of leaders. And I appreciate that honesty and frankness from RFK Jr.”

The news comes amid uncertainty surrounding how pro-life Trump’s second administration will be after the president-elect oversaw watered-down pro-life language inserted into the 2024 Republican Party platform last July, which was entirely revamped and truncated from the previous GOP platform. Trump also repeatedly said on the campaign trail last year that he would leave the abortion issue to the states and that some state pro-life protections are “too tough.” The 45th president’s inconsistent rhetoric on the issue has left pro-life lawmakers and advocates wondering if he would, in fact, use his executive authority to undo the pro-abortion executive orders that President Joe Biden enacted.

Nevertheless, in an op-ed published Monday, Hawley reiterated his optimism that the president-elect will restore the pro-life policies that were reversed under Biden. The senator noted that in addition to restoring the Mexico City Policy, barring abortion businesses from receiving Title X grant money, and restoring federal funding to pregnancy resource centers, Trump’s first-term HHS also “restrict[ed] the use of human fetal tissue obtained from abortions.”

“The Biden administration gutted those rules,” Hawley concluded. “Thankfully, it’s a new day. And President Trump has the power to start protecting life again — immediately. He should use that power boldly to protect those who most need it: the innocent unborn.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

One final scandal at Planned Parenthood as the DOGE axe falls

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Another day, another human trafficking scandal at Planned Parenthood.

Check out this report from the New York Post, if you’re feeling brave:

Stomach-churning emails show Planned Parenthood negotiating terms regarding the donation of aborted fetuses for medical research.

The emails discuss fetal tissue like any other commodity such as sugar or rice, nonchalantly negotiating for fetuses up to 23 weeks old from elective abortions.

A heavily-redacted so-called “Research Plan” submitted to the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Institutional Review Board and approved in 2018 states scientists wanted 2,500 fetuses from up to almost the sixth month of gestation for experimentation.

The emails came to light via the Center for Medical Progress’s David Daleiden, who still to this day is wading through 2010s lawfare launched by California’s erstwhile attorney general Kamala Harris.

As the Post points out, selling chopped-up unborn babies is a federal crime, but donating them and then receiving “reasonable payments associated with the transportation, implantation, processing, preservation, quality control, or storage” for said babies is not.

In this case, Planned Parenthood employed an additional legal shield by drawing up contracts with UCSD that retained the “intellectual property rights” of the fetal tissue with the abortion giant.

Seeing past the statutory subterfuge, Daleiden told the Post, “These documents show that Planned Parenthood is supplying healthy babies who are old enough to survive outside the womb from late term abortions to the University of California’s royalty-generating experiments.”

Indeed, most healthy babies born at 23 weeks survive outside the womb with sufficient medical care.

Daleiden’s revelation also puts to lie the legacy media’s efforts to downplay the prevalence and gravity of late-term abortions.

Surreptitiously monetising unborn babies who were aborted for elective reasons and could have survived if given the chance might sound like a Mengelian monstrosity, but it’s business as usual for Planned Parenthood. As previously noted here at Mercator:

This is an organisation that allegedly sells human body parts, is likely the biggest supplier of transgender drugs in the United States, performs some 390,000 abortions each year, uses American taxpayer treasure to abort brown babies overseas, was founded by the racist eugenicist Margaret Sanger, boasts US$2.2 billion in assets, and is supported by some of America’s biggest and wokest corporate giants.

But not for much longer — if the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has its way.

n a Wall Street Journal op-ed published the day before the latest Planned Parenthood scandal broke, DOGE architects Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy singled out the taxpayer-funded behemoth for special attention:

DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood.

Pro-life groups have greeted the news with elation.

To be clear, the decision by Vivek and Musk is apparently a philosophical rather than a political one — that is, it arises from libertarian instincts, not conservative convictions. They explain:

The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long. That’s why we’re doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. We will serve as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees…

We are assisting the Trump transition team to identify and hire a lean team of small-government crusaders, including some of the sharpest technical and legal minds in America. This team will work in the new administration closely with the White House Office of Management and Budget. The two of us will advise DOGE at every step to pursue three major kinds of reform: regulatory rescissions, administrative reductions and cost savings.

The pair refer to the “decisive electoral mandate” of Donald Trump’s recent win and the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court as their impetus — and their once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to cut the clutter in Washington and free taxpayers from funding causes that would have horrified America’s Founders.

Horrified indeed would they have been at the dark arts of Planned Parenthood.

Mercifully, with the funding tap turned off, it will be a business in decline — and won’t future generations be thankful! 

Do you think that DOGE will be regarded as a success by the time it winds up on July 4, 2026? Comment below!

AUTHOR

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved,

Pro-Life Leaders Praise ‘Beautiful’ Plan for DOGE to Defund Planned Parenthood

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Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s plans to protect taxpayers from wasteful spending will take a scalpel to Planned Parenthood funding, reasserting Americans’ financial autonomy by removing federal funds from the nation’s largest abortion chain.

The pair outlined their vision for the forthcoming Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, specifically underscoring plans to enact a host of policies long supported by pro-life advocates and government efficiency experts alike.

“DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended, from $535 million a year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and $1.5 billion for grants to international organizations to nearly $300 million to progressive groups like Planned Parenthood,” wrote Musk and Ramaswamy.

Planned Parenthood received $699.3 million in taxpayer funding fiscal year and carried out 392,712 abortions in its 2022-2023 fiscal year, according to its most recent annual report.

Taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood surged $65.9 million since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, even as inflation and a slow economic recovery from the artificial COVID-19 shutdowns eroded Americans’ real income.

Some of Planned Parenthood’s spending has been blatantly political. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Planned Parenthood announced plans to spend $140 million on supporting Democratic candidates who support abortion (and abortion funding) and to launch a long-term campaign to expand abortion in all 50 states. Their policy outline included $40 million on door-to-door canvassing, TV and online advertising, phone banks, and direct mail targeting voters in the swing states of Arizona, Georgia, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the 2024 presidential election. It also joined other left-wing organizations to launch a 10-year, $100 million campaign aimed at “securing access to abortion care in every state.”

Planned Parenthood’s annual report also notes the abortion chain spent $46.7 million on “public policy” and $14.8 to “engage communities.”

Pro-life and pro-family leaders welcomed the efforts to extricate taxpayers from funding Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion chain which has increasingly stepped into carrying out transgender procedures, often to minors as young as 12.

“Americans work hard for their money — and under the Biden administration, despite loads of hard work, that money didn’t go very far. For many, the economy was a top issue in this election. Working to ensure that American taxpayer dollars are only used in ways that work to further the good of our nation is at the forefront of the Trump administration’s agenda,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “It was beautiful to see that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have recognized that using American taxpayer dollars to fund the killing of unborn children is a complete waste of money. It is inefficient on so many levels — including that it robs Americans of future generations of children. I look forward to seeing the other areas DOGE recognizes as a waste of taxpayer dollars; this first announcement signaled that rebuilding a culture of life is part of taking back America.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins found “lots of good news in this plan,” specifically highlighting its calls to:

  • Defund Planned Parenthood.
  • Defund international [organizations] at odds with our interests.
  • Defund PBS/NPR.
  • Mass rescissions of unconstitutional regulations that exceed the authority of the Executive branch.
  • Return the federal workforce to the office five days a week, which “would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome.”

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America (SFLA), had raised the issue of defunding Planned Parenthood repeatedly in recent days. “Hey DOGE, our tax dollars fund abortion,” she posted on social media last Thursday. “Taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortion. If President Trump’s goal is to end federal involvement in abortion, we must start by defunding & debarring Planned Parenthood.”

SBA Pro-Life America noted that Planned Parenthood had amassed a whopping $2.5 billion in net assets. “They should never get taxpayer dollars,” said the group, as it thanked Musk and Ramaswamy “for focusing on this important issue.”

Lila Rose of Live Action described the DOGE defunding proposal as “Amazing!”

Liberty Counsel hoped DOGE’s policy will push toward “ending all taxpayer-funded abortion.” Human Life International called DOGE’s focus on defunding anti-life programs “such good news” but asked Christians to “pray that this includes defunding global anti-life programs.”

“The federal government shouldn’t be in the business of giving away free money to non-governmental organizations. That should be obvious,” Ramaswamy commented separately.

But Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson lashed out at Musk and Ramaswamy, deriding them as “agents of chaos.”

Defunding Planned Parenthood means “wreaking havoc on our public health system, of which Planned Parenthood is an integral part,” she contended.

“Planned Parenthood doesn’t get a blank check from the federal government. Like any other health care provider, or hospital, Planned Parenthood affiliates are reimbursed for services provided to patients at health centers,” she asserted. “What Musk and Ramaswamy call ‘federal overspending’ provides critical and necessary sexual and reproductive health care to thousands of people every day — care that will disappear if they get their way.”

But Planned Parenthood officials settled a Medicaid fraud investigation, paying the state of Texas $4.3 million in 2013. Planned Parenthood’s Houston affiliate, Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast (PPGC), “improperly billed the Texas Medicaid program for products and services that were never actually rendered, not medically necessary, and were not covered by the Medicaid program — and were therefore not eligible for reimbursement,” announced then-Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (R), who is now governor. Planned Parenthood accepted no blame in the settlement.

Wisconsin state auditors also concluded that up to two-thirds of all Medicaid payments to Planned Parenthood facilities were fraudulent in 2016.

The abortion industry CEO said Planned Parenthood had defeated efforts to defund it in the past and would win again. “We’ve been here before — we are not new to shutdown and ‘defund’ fights. We fended off a number of these attacks during Trump’s first term — and Planned Parenthood health centers are still there serving millions of patients across the nation,” she claimed.

But Planned Parenthood gave up federal funding rather than choosing to reduce taxpayer-funded abortion advocacy. President Donald Trump stipulated in 2019 that recipients of federal family planning funding through Title X cannot refer women for or carry out abortions. Rather than “fending off” the fight or continuing to provide “care,” the Planned Parenthood Federation of America pulled out of Title X in 2019. President Joe Biden reversed the Trump administration’s pro-life policy in October 2021.

The Planned Parenthood CEO also noted that “50% of Planned Parenthood patients are enrolled in Medicaid and other federal and state programs for uninsured patients,” pointing out other potential revenue streams for DOGE to eliminate.

All branches of government aim to assist DOGE. House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) announced that he plans to create a Government Efficiency Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in the forthcoming Congress.

The administration’s plans call for DOGE to end all operations on Independence Day: July 4, 2026.

“Our North Star for reform will be the U.S. Constitution,” wrote Musk and Ramaswamy. “There is no better birthday gift to our nation on its 250th anniversary than to deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Catholic Joe Biden Awards Medal To Former Planned Parenthood Head Who Oversaw Hundreds Of Thousands Of Abortions

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President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Cecile Richards Wednesday, the former president of Planned Parenthood.

Biden praised Richards for her “courage” and fearlessness in leading America towards being “a nation of freedom” in an X post. Richards oversaw at least 3.8 million abortions during her 12 years as Planned Parenthood’s president, according to Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which analyzed several of the organization’s annual reports.

Richards stepped down from her position as head of the organization in 2018 after a federal investigation revealed Planned Parenthood was allegedly illegally harvesting and selling parts from aborted babies. Earlier this year, Richards announced that she has been battling the same form of brain cancer that killed Biden’s son in 2015, according to abc News.

The former Planned Parenthood president previously urged women “to be bold” in announcing their abortions and to encourage other women to do the same.

Biden’s commitment to his Catholic faith has come into question due to his open support for abortion, especially after a priest denied him Holy Communion in 2019 over his promotion of abortion as a public official. The Biden administration has reportedly spent just under $45,000 in taxpayer dollars between June and December of 2023 on travel expenses for military members to receive abortions.

Biden has also been accused of weaponizing the FBI against Catholics and pro-life advocates, labeling them as “potential domestic terrorists,” according to the House Weaponization Subcommittee.

AUTHOR

Jaryn Crouson

Contributor.

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Here Are Donald Trump’s ‘Promises Made’ on Transgenderism and Abortion

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As once-and-future President Donald J. Trump strode to the podium to deliver his victory speech after winning the 2024 presidential election, he made his exuberant followers a solemn vow: “I will govern by a simple motto: Promises made, promises kept.” President Trump, who made greater efforts to keep his campaign pledges as the 45th president than perhaps any modern president in decades, has vowed to protect children from irreversible surgeries, uproot extreme transgender ideology from government, enshrine parental rights, and end the weaponization of government against Christians and pro-life advocates.

Here are some of President-Elect Donald Trump’s most important 2024 campaign promises on transgender issues, abortion, and education.

President Donald Trump’s 2024 Promises on Transgender Ideology

The Biden-Harris administration’s advocacy of extreme transgender ideology did more to return the 45th president to office than any other issue. The Democratic polling firm Blueprint found that swing voters said the top reason they voted against the Democratic candidate in 2024 is that “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.” And Republicans spent $65 million on ads highlighting the Democratic Party’s transgender extremism in three months.

But long before the election, President Trump had vowed to reel in the radicalism of the Obama-Biden-Harris administrations.

“Probably number one on my list … I will sign a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation — think of it, sexual mutilation — in all 50 states,” President Trump promised during his speech to the 2023 Pray Vote Stand Summit. He denounced governors like Minnesota’s Tim Walz (D) and California’s Gavin Newsom (D) for signing “depraved new laws that strip parents of parental rights and that encourage minors to be transported across state lines for sexual mutilation. … We will prosecute those involved in this sick California scheme for violating federal laws against kidnapping, sex trafficking, child abuse, and the deprivation of their civil rights.”

President Trump has long recognized the overreach, and political value, of extreme gender ideology. No later than February 2023, President Trump included a robust, 11-point plan to end gender “madness” in his “Agenda47” blueprint for his next administration. Trump posted these pledges on the Trump-Vance campaign website and articulated these points in a video posted on Rumble on February 1, 2023.

“Here’s my plan to stop the chemical, physical, and emotional mutilation of our children,” said the president.

  1. “On day one, I will revoke Joe Biden’s cruel policies on so-called ‘gender-affirming care,” which Trump called “ridiculous.” As he did at the Pray Vote Stand Summit, he promised to oppose “a process that includes giving kids puberty blockers, mutating their physical appearance, and ultimately performing surgery on minor children.”
  1. “I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” he said.
  1. “I will then ask Congress to permanently stop federal taxpayer dollars from being used to promote or pay for these procedures and pass a law prohibiting child sexual mutilation in all 50 states,” he said, forecasting, “It’ll go very quickly.”
  1. ”I will declare that any hospital or health care provider that participates in the chemical or physical mutilation of minor youth will no longer meet federal health and safety standards for Medicaid and Medicare and will be terminated from the program immediately.” For instance, Boston Children’s Hospital received $1.4 million from the Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EOHHS) of Massachusetts for inflicting “gender transition services” between January 2015 and May 2023. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) also awardeda $3.3 million grant to build a website targeting young people in other states who identify as transgender.
  1. “Furthermore, I will support the creation of a private right of action for victims to sue doctors who have unforgivably performed these procedures on minor children,” said Trump. Within one week, two former victims of the transgender industry — Chloe Cole and Camille Kiefel — sued the doctors who misdiagnosed their mental illness as gender dysphoria and recommended surgical amputations.
  1. “The Department of Justice will investigate Big Pharma and the big hospital networks to determine whether they have deliberately covered up horrific long-term side effects of sex transitions in order to get rich at the expense of vulnerable patients — in this case, very vulnerable,” promised the 45th president. Economic considerations undeniably play a role in Dr. Shayne Taylor convinced Nashville’s Vanderbilt University to begin carrying out transgender surgeries, because “they require a lot of follow-ups. They require a lot of time, and they make money —they make money for the hospital.”
  1. ”We will also investigate whether Big Pharma or others have illegally marketed hormones and puberty blockers, which are in no way licensed or approved for this use,” said Trump about the off-label, experimental uses of drugs intended to temporarily suspend precocious puberty only until it could safely begin.
  1. “My Department of Education will inform states and school districts that if any teacher or school official suggests to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body, they will be faced with severe consequences, including potential civil rights violations for sex discrimination and the elimination of federal funding,” he said.
  1. “As part of our new credentialing body for teachers, we will promote positive education about the nuclear family, the roles of mothers and fathers, and celebrating rather than erasing the things that make men and women different and unique,” said President Trump.
  1. “I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female, and they are assigned at birth. The bill will also make clear that Title IX prohibits men from participating in women’s sports,” said the president-elect. The injustice of having female athletes like Riley Gaines lose scholarships, prizes, or other opportunities to middling male athletes drove voters toward the Trump-Vance ticket, polls show.
  1. “And we will protect the rights of parents from being forced to allow their minor child to assume a gender which is new and an identity without the parent’s consent,” Trump vowed. When one mother’s former lesbian partner began to teach her four-year-old son about extreme gender ideology, she said the boy’s preschool sent her “edicts by email,” with no consideration that he, or she, may not be fully committed to his social transition.

“No serious country should be telling its children that they were born in the wrong gender,” said President Trump.” Under my leadership, this madness will end.”

President Donald Trump’s 2024 Promises on Abortion

Although the Trump 2024 presidential campaign retreated to a less committed policy on protecting the unborn, the Trump-Vance ticket promised to end the weaponization of the federal government against pro-life advocates and left the door open to some additional pro-life measures.

After the 2022 Dobbs decision, the Biden-Harris administration stood by as Jane’s Revenge attacked pro-life women’s resource centers and churches. It then established a federal task force to prosecute peaceful — often elderly — pro-life sidewalk counselors on flimsy charges that they violated the 1994 Federal Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.

“To reverse these cruel travesties of justice, tonight I’m announcing that the moment I win the election, I will appoint a special task force to rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner who’s been unjustly persecuted by the Biden administration … so that I can study the situation very quickly and sign their pardons or commutations on day one,” President Trump told the 2023 Pray Vote Stand Summit. “Never again will the federal government be used to target religious believers.”

As president in 2017, President Trump strengthened pro-life policies that protected U.S. taxpayer funds from underwriting abortion around the world. He later enacted regulations preventing those who receive Title X funding from advocating abortion — which led Planned Parenthood to withdraw from the federal family planning program rather than give up abortion advocacy. The administration appears amenable to reenacting these measures. “On the question of defunding Planned Parenthood, look, I mean, our view is we don’t think that taxpayers should fund late-term abortions. That has been a consistent view of the Trump campaign the first time around. It will remain a consistent view,” said Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance last month.

Vance also personally distinguished between a “national abortion ban” and a “minimum national standard,” such as a bill to protect unborn babies from abortion after 15 weeks — although Trump has not registered his support for the measure.

President Trump kept his promise after he became the first candidate to release a list of potential Supreme Court justices’ names during the 2016 election. After seeing the hand of God deliver him from two assassination attempts, President Trump has found a divine purpose in carrying out his campaign promises. If he keeps these promises, which won the Republican Party eight out of 10 white evangelical voters and more than nine out of 10 pro-life votes, he will go far toward his goal to make America great again.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson 

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Why Young Voters Shifted Towards Trump

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Vance: Trump Has Been ‘Consistent’ about Defunding Planned Parenthood

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Former President Donald Trump’s running mate is pledging to defund the abortion giant Planned Parenthood if Trump is elected for a second term. Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) was asked by RealClearPolitics over the weekend if a second Trump administration would defund Planned Parenthood, a policy Trump discussed during his first presidential bid. Vance replied, “On the question of defunding Planned Parenthood, look, I mean, our view is we don’t think that taxpayers should fund late-term abortions. That has been a consistent view of the Trump campaign the first time around. It will remain a consistent view.”

In comments to The Washington Stand, Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, said, “The majority of Americans believe that taxpayer dollars should not fund abortion. Planned Parenthood, an organization that kills close to 400,000 unborn babies every year, feels differently.”

She continued, “American taxpayer dollars are meant to help our country be stronger and more secure, and to help our people be healthier and better cared for. Using taxpayer dollars to kill unborn children does not accomplish any of these goals.” Szoch added, “Praise God that the Trump-Vance ticket recognizes that the hard-earned dollars of American men and women should not be used to kill the most innocent among us.”

During his first administration, Trump revised the Title X federal family planning program to bar tax dollars from going to organizations that partnered with the abortion industry or provided referrals for abortions, effectively forcing Planned Parenthood to withdraw from Title X. “For decades, American taxpayers have been wrongfully forced to subsidize the abortion industry through Title X federal funding. So today, we have kept another promise,” Trump announced at a Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America event in 2018. He continued, “My administration has proposed a new rule to prohibit Title X funding from going to any clinic that performs abortions.” The Biden-Harris administration reversed Trump’s Title X rule upon taking office in 2021.

Trump was responsible for appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices who overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 — an achievement he touts when appealing to conservative evangelicals and Catholics — but announced earlier this year that he intends to leave the issue of abortion legislation to the individual states and will not use federal authority to protect the unborn.

Prior to the 2024 Republican National Convention, Trump was responsible for slashing the Republican Party Platform, removing the GOP’s longstanding commitment to pro-life principles. Since then, both Trump and Vance have avoided promoting pro-life legislation and have even stated that they would oppose a national abortion ban. However, both have also called the Democratic Party “radical” for promoting abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, even up until the moment of birth, and have pressed Democrats like Vice President Kamala Harris to admit that they support unrestricted abortion.

Earlier this year, Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins called on Trump to defund Planned Parenthood in a second administration, “If you want no federal involvement in abortion, then debar and defund Planned Parenthood. The federal government wasted almost $700 million on Planned Parenthood, according to their 2022-2023 annual report.”

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Planned Parenthood Came from the ‘Same Racist, Elitist Pseudoscience that Birthed the Holocaust’: Expert

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In an article published on the Ohio State Senate’s website, Michele Reynolds wrote, “Abortion is killing the black community.” Abortion “is not health care,” it “is extermination.” And Reynolds is right — this industry is not only murderous, but its origins are inherently racist.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of the infamous abortion hub Planned Parenthood, was an open believer in eugenics, which is the theory that “humans can be improved through selective breeding of populations.” When Sanger put her “birth control” plan into action, she had her eyes set on decreasing the amount of black people that walked the earth. And interestingly enough, Planned Parenthood does not hide this disturbing history.

On its website, the organization provides a multi-paragraph explanation of its history, including the details of Sanger’s “harmful” vision. “Margaret Sanger’s racism and belief in eugenics are in direct opposition to Planned Parenthood’s mission,” the abortion group concluded. “Planned Parenthood denounces Margaret Sanger’s belief in eugenics. Further, Planned Parenthood denounces the history and legacy of anti-Blackness in gynecology and the reproductive rights movement.”

But the reality is, these claims can only be described as pure lip service. Only a brief overview of modern statistics proves that Planned Parenthood, for all intents and purposes, is still discriminatory to its core.

As guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice said on Tuesday’s episode of “Washington Watch,” Planned Parenthood is “obviously trying to run from their racist roots.” Ryan Bomberger, co-founder and chief creative officer of the Radiance Foundation, agreed. “Well, sure,” he said, “they can try to run, but they can’t change their DNA.” But even beyond their inability to alter the foundation upon which they were built, Bomberger argued that this baby-victimizing organization has no interest in changing their DNA.

As if murdering babies of any ethnicity wasn’t enough, a policy report published by the Center for Urban Renewal and Education highlighted data from a 2011 report that found “black women make up 14 percent of the childbearing population, yet obtained 36.2 percent of reported abortions.” Additionally, “Percentages at these levels illustrate that more than 19 million black babies have been aborted since 1973.” And yet, the statistics only get increasingly bleak.

The research emphasized that an analysis of “abortion by ethnicity” confirms “black women disproportionately lead in the numbers.” For example, “in Mississippi, 79 percent of abortions are obtained by black women; in Washington, D.C., more than 60 percent; in Georgia, 59.4 percent; in Alabama, 58.4 percent.” And “in state after state, similar numbers are found, with black women aborting at two, three or more times their presence in the population.”

These details, the report contended, are but a small fraction of evidence that points to a startling reality: “In the 1850s, it was the black slave who sought freedom and equal protection under the law. Today it is the unborn child.”

Bomberger did not hold back any punches. Planned Parenthood, he urged, was “birthed out of the same racist, elitist pseudoscience that birthed the Holocaust, which is called eugenics,” and “they can’t run away from that.” While they like to pretend they’re different from the days of their founder, “They’re actually worse now … [with] over 360,000 [babies] every year killed by Planned Parenthood.”

Needless to say, “The origins of Planned Parenthood are rooted in this mindset that certain people didn’t deserve to live,” Bomberger said. In the early days of the rising push for abortion, those who were considered “unfit,” such as children conceived out of wedlock and poor black communities, were the primary target. But “today,” he stated, “it’s abortion on demand, where literally abortion is the number one killer in the black community. It kills more black lives in two weeks than the KKK killed in a century. That’s the reality.”

“That’s stunning,” Hice stated. “I would imagine there [are] many women who may not know about Planned Parenthood’s origin.” As such, he added, “How can we get this out?” Because “people need to know.” In response, Bomberger explained that Radiance Foundation started “with a billboard campaign that called out the insane and inherent racism in the abortion industry.” Their journey of uncovering the racism in the abortion industry began by calling out the falsehoods that abortion giants promote. “Planned Parenthood and these Planned Parenthood-funded minority groups are trying to say [that] ‘abortions are [an] uplift out of poverty. Abortion is equality. It’s our empowerment.’” However, as Bomberger went on to ask, “How is any community empowered by killing its posterity?”

The truth is, “[A]bortion, no matter the color [of the baby], is devastating and wrong and so tragic.” But these abortion hubs are pushing the notion that there needs to be “more abortions in the black community.” And what people don’t realize, Bomberger urged, is that “Planned Parenthood brags … about how black people are their base,” and it “touts itself as an anti-racism organization.” But when all is said and done, “How can you be anti-racism when you’re the leading killer of black lives?” It just “goes to show the fraud of the anti-racism movement.”

It “is incredible information” to take in, Hice shook his head. But it begs the question, what about “black Christians who have accepted abortion as just simply part of the package when it comes to supporting Democrats?” Additionally, how do we respond to “the preachers who are more Democrat[ic] than they are gospel preachers when it comes to standing up for the unborn?”

According to Bomberger, “[T]he dissonance is just unbelievable.” He elaborated, “[Y]ou’ve got the Democratic Party, which is the party of slavery, the party that went to war for slavery, the party of Jim Crow, the party of poll taxes and literacy tests — all the Jim Crow policies.” This is also “the same party today that is pushing unlimited abortion in the black community.” As such, he said, “What I say to those pastors” is that they need to “wake up.” Abortion is nothing other than “having lives made in the image of God destroyed under the name of some fake sort of equality [and] fake sort of reproductive justice.”

Ultimately, “[T]he only justice that pastors or … any other Christian … should be concerned with is biblical justice. And it’s not biblical justice to slaughter our unborn and to have women exploited by a multi-billion dollar abortion industry.”

So, Hice asked, where’s the encouragement in all this? As Bomberger put it, the encouragement buried in the grim facts is that “we’re seeing an awakening by pastors being bold and actually speaking out about this.” It’s not necessarily a “seismic shift, but even if it’s a handful of people here and a handful of people there, it’s a victory.” And as Hice noted, every movement “starts with a few.”

Bomberger agreed, and he concluded that what he wants to impart to people is this: “Have hope. Because when you are awakened, when you understand the truth, you have clarity and context. And it sets people free.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

5 things pro-lifers have learned in the two years since Dobbs

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Nearly two years ago, Roe v Wade was overturned when the Supreme Court ruled in the  case. As a result of this decision, abortion was no longer a national “right”; each state can now make its own laws regarding abortion.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, as of May 1, 2024:

  • 14 states have a total abortion ban
  • 27 states have abortion bans based on gestational duration
    • 7 states ban abortion at or before 18 weeks’ gestation
    • 20 states ban abortion at some point after 18 weeks
  • 9 states and the District of Columbia do not restrict abortion based on gestational duration

Abortion remains a tragedy of epic proportions. In the ensuing two years, we have seen anger, resentment, fear, and outright lies. Every day, babies are dying.

The past two years have taught us a lot, but they have also given us direction for the way forward. Below are some of the things we in the pro-life movement have learned since Dobbs.

1. The pro-abortion movement will not stop

Organizations like Planned Parenthood have become creative as they encourage interstate travel so a woman can kill her child in a state with more “favourable” abortion laws. Amazon, Apple, and other companies will reimburse part of the cost for women to travel to kill their children. Slogans like “bans off our bodies” taint the minds of young people as they purposely try to anger them about laws that attempt to protect innocent babies. The list goes on and on. Those who want abortion enshrined in law will do anything in their power to keep abortion legal.

2. Many people think that abortion has ended

Those who don’t read pro-life news or understand the implications of Dobbs think that abortion ended when Roe was overturned. They think there’s no reason to fight for the rights of babies anymore or to support pro-life organizations. They falsely claim that pro-lifers “won.” But the graves of thousands of dead babies tell us the truth. Abortion is far from over.

3. Many think that a little abortion is OK

Many states have laws that protect babies after a certain point in their lives or only in certain circumstances (after rape, to save the life of the mother, etc.). But, as Judie Brown, president of American Life League (ALL), explains, “A person is a person from [creation] onwards, and abortion must be illegal in all circumstances, with no exceptions.” That is why ALL has a no exceptions, no compromise policy. Abortion is wrong in all circumstances, not just in some. Every preborn child deserves a chance to be born.

4. The abortion pill has become a significant threat

The abortion pill regimen consists of mifepristone and misoprostol. The mother first takes the mifepristone, which starves the baby to death. And then about 48 hours later she will take the misoprostol, which expels the dead baby. The Guttmacher Institute’s latest numbers show that these pill abortions accounted for 63 percent of abortions in 2023. That equates to about 642,700 dead babies. With laws that have become increasingly lax, the mother can now take both pills at home, which poses significant dangers to the mom and of course is deadly for the baby.

5. Education is vital

The pro-abortion movement is not going to give up, so we cannot either. It is incumbent upon us all to teach the people around us the truth—not only about the humanity of the preborn baby from the first moment of existence (when the sperm fertilizes the egg), but about the lies that the pro-abortion movement tries to propagate. That means that we teach our children from the time they are small that all babies are valuable and deserve a chance to live.

Lessons from programs like the Culture of Life Studies Program allow parents and teachers to talk about pro-life topics in an age-appropriate way—at home or at school. We must also educate our friends, family, coworkers, and people within our communities. That means we give voice to the preborn baby, never denying his humanity and existence. It takes moral courage, it takes persistence, and it takes speaking in love for both the mom and the baby.

The two years since the Dobbs decision have proven that there are very vocal people who will not rest until abortion is the law of the land. While we must never allow this sad state of our society to discourage our efforts, we can think of this as an opportunity to do God’s work here on earth. We must be His hands and feet as we speak, educate, and fight to protect the most vulnerable among us. The babies deserve nothing less.

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AUTHOR

Susan Ciancio is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has worked as a writer and editor for over 20 years; 14 of those years have been in the pro-life sector. Currently, she is the editor of American Life League’s Celebrate Life Magazine—the nation’s premier Catholic pro-life magazine. She is also the executive editor of ALL’s Culture of Life Studies Program—a pre-K-12 Catholic pro-life education organization.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.