Tag Archive for: Planned Parenthood

Proclaiming Life: That No More Generations May Be Lost

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: 198419851986198719881989199019911992199320022003200420052006200720082009201820192020, 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

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

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 PostThese 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 Californias 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 Americas 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. Thats why were 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

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

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

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 awarded$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

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

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

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.

Planned Parenthood Committed 392,712 Abortions, Received $699.3 Million in Taxpayer Funding in 2023

Despite seeing fewer patients and reducing bona fide health care services, Planned Parenthood received a record-breaking amount of taxpayer funding last year, according to Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson in the organization’s most recent annual report, which she describes as a “love note” to abortionists.

Planned Parenthood committed 392,712 abortions and received a record-breaking $699.3 million in taxpayer funding in the 2022-2023 fiscal year, according to its most recent annual report released on Wednesday.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s affiliates perpetrated an average of 1,076 abortions every day of the year, as they amassed $1.8 billion in revenue and $2.5 billion in net assets.

Government funding for the abortion giant increased, although Planned Parenthood saw 80,000 fewer patients (2.05 million) last year than in 2022 (2.13 million), according to PPFA’s annual report, titled “Above & Beyond,” which covers the fiscal year which ran from July 2022 to June 2023.

Despite complaining of about half the country enacting pro-life protections for children since the Dobbs decision, the number of abortions Planned Parenthood carried out surged in the last year. Abortions increased by 18,557 over last year — when Planned Parenthood committed 374,155 abortions and received $670.4 million in taxpayer funding, during its 2021-2022 fiscal year — an increase of 9,252 abortions over pre-Dobbs levels.

“This report is our love note” to abortionists, writes Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson.

Pro-life advocates observed Planned Parenthood has inflicted a ponderous number of deaths on innocent Americans last year. “This is a record number of abortions for the organization and represents approximately 40% of the abortions performed in the United States,” said Michael New, a senior associate scholar at Charlotte Lozier Institute, in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand. “This puts abortions performed by Planned Parenthood in the top four leading causes of death in the United States, after heart disease, cancer and COVID-19,” SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser told TWS.

Taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood surged by $28.9 million over last year and $65.9 million since 2021. Taxpayer revenue accounts for one-third (34%) of Planned Parenthood’s revenue. “Planned Parenthood dropped this bombshell report while many Americans are still recovering from Tax Day,” said Dannenfelser. “Bidenomics has turned into abortionomics.”

“Meanwhile, while your average American’s annual income is down,” wrote Hugh Brown, executive vice president of the American Life League, in a statement emailed to TWS. “We can barely afford necessities — and our government’s answer? Funnel $700 million to the elite baby killers.”

The funding increase comes although a majority (53%) of Americans oppose funding abortion in the United States, and larger majorities oppose foreign abortion funding. Although presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has yet to announce he will protect U.S. taxpayers from funding Planned Parenthood in his second term, he released a Protect Life rule preventing Title X family funding recipients from referring women for abortions in July 2019, his third year in office. Planned Parenthood withdrew from the Title X program rather than curtail or redirect its abortion business.

However, President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s order in October 2021 and subsequently opened multiple funding avenues to the abortion franchise. “The federal government should not be funding the facilitation of abortion in any form or fashion — at home or abroad,” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins has noted.

More Money, Fewer Health Care Services

The increased funding comes despite the fact that the number of genuine health care services Planned Parenthood offers has fallen precipitously. “Between 2022 and 2023, preventive-care visits fell by 31.0%, pap tests fell by 13.5%, cancer screenings fell by 1.4%, and adoption referrals fell by 4.5%. Interestingly, for every adoption referral in 2023, Planned Parenthood performed over 228 abortions,” explained New. “In the past 10 years, the number of abortions performed by Planned Parenthood has increased by 20%. Meanwhile, cancer screenings fell by more than 58%, and prenatal services declined by more than 67%.”

The report highlights PPFA’s commitment to selling women on abortion, say critics. “Once again, pregnant women who walk into Planned Parenthood are sold an abortion 97% of the time, rather than helped to keep their child or make an adoption plan. Meanwhile, they saw 80,000 fewer patients, provided 60,000 fewer pap tests and breast exams, and even gave out less contraception,” Dannenfelser told TWS.

PPFA increased its bottom line by working on the logistics of abortions in pro-life states. Some “90 patient navigators across 41 Planned Parenthood affiliates helped more than 33,000 people get the transportation and travel support, financial assistance, and referrals they needed to get abortion,” its report states.

Planned Parenthood compared its abortion-expansion activities to the miracles wrought by faith in Jesus Christ. “For Planned Parenthood [abortion] staff, this was a year of moving mountains: finding appointments in other states and the resources to get patients there, building as much capacity as possible for abortion appointments, fulfilling increased demand in some places for birth control, and much more,” the organization writes. PPFA claimed it provided financial support to 15,000 people for travel for out-of-state abortion and funding for 50,000 mothers to have an abortion. It did not state how it raised these funds.

Transgender Procedures, Abortion Advocacy, and Abortifacients

The latest update reveals that the abortion business’s concerted drive to profit from expanded transgender procedures advanced in 2023. Planned Parenthood refused to specifically disclose how many transgender procedures the abortion franchise carried out in the last fiscal year, lumping its transgender business among 177,237 “Other Procedures.” PPFA reported a mere 15,902 “other procedures” in its 2020-2021 report.

The report revealed that 45 of Planned Parenthood’s 49 affiliates perpetrated transgender procedures in 2022 — up from 41 the previous year and just 30 in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. This year’s report includes first-person testimonials praising PPFA for administering life-altering, sterilizing, and bone-depleting hormone injections. “As a trans woman, the services provided to me saved my life. I am so grateful for the services you provide to ALL women,” wrote the man.

Planned Parenthood and its international affiliate, Planned Parenthood Global, committed tens of millions of dollars to abortion expansion at home and abroad. Planned Parenthood boasts of its 30 open lawsuits against pro-life protections, winning injunctions preventing seven states from defending unborn children from abortion. Its U.S. affiliates spent $46.7 million on “public policy” and $14.8 to “engage communities.”

Planned Parenthood Global dedicated $113 million to abortion “advocacy,” partnering with 80 organizations in nine countries. Its activities included “community-based access to misoprostol,” the second pill in the chemical abortion cocktail, which can be used on its own to induce abortion (with varying degrees of harm to mothers). The abortion business directed 90% of its efforts toward nations that protect unborn children’s lives in the law, such as Mexico, where its efforts led to “the legalization of abortion in Quintana Roo up to 12 weeks — a decision affecting 470,000 women of reproductive age in the state.”

Contraception remained a cornerstone of the PPFA business model in 2023. PPFA distributed contraception 2,250,913 times, including implanting long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARCs) in 1,548,022 people and distributing 552,721 so-called “Emergency Contraception” kits. All hormonal contraception may potentially act as an abortifacient by making it impossible for a newly conceived/fertilized child to implant in the uterine wall.

PPFA shapes the way young people see sex both through partnerships with public schools and online influencers. “Planned Parenthood is proud to be the nation’s largest sex educator,” writes McGill Johnson in the report’s opening summary. Planned Parenthood’s videos were viewed three million times, and PPFA reached 1.2 million people through education or training sessions. “PPFA launched a national campaign across platforms to destigmatize abortion,” the report notes.

PPFA also plans to shape academic views by producing “scientific” studies promoting its view of the abortion controversy. In all, “34 Planned Parenthood affiliates participated in 47 studies” last year, including one focusing on “potential logistical, financial, and other burdens of travel faced by patients who are forced to travel for their” abortion, the report states.

Planned Parenthood’s report also raises concerns over possible censorship. A section of the annual report titled “Shifting Culture” states PPFA is “leading tech companies to discuss how to improve corporate accountability and address health care misinformation.”

The report takes on added importance as abortion has emerged as the dominant theme of the Biden-Harris reelection campaign and Democratic campaigns generally. “Vice President Kamala Harris even made a campaign stop at a Planned Parenthood abortion center,” noted Dannenfelser. Harris called pro-life laws “immoral” during the visit. “In turn, their political arm spends more than any other abortion-related group to lobby the federal government against commonsense policies like protecting babies born alive after failed abortions.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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

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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’s Trans Hormone Business Is Booming, Creating Thousands Of New Patients ‘For Life’

The number of transgender services performed at Planned Parenthood clinics exploded over the past few years as the transgender medical industry became increasingly lucrative, according to data published by the organization’s regional branches.

Planned Parenthood first began providing hormone treatments for transgender patients in 2005, and since then 41 out of 49 regional branches have provided transgender services as of 2022. However, in just the last three years, Planned Parenthood has become dramatically more involved in the gender hormone industry.

Between 2020 and 2022, the number of transgender services performed and/or visits related to transgender treatments at Planned Parenthood clinics increased by roughly 125%, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of available data. Regional branches that made their data available collectively saw 17,036 visits in 2020 compared to 38,337 in 2022, a staggering increase in such a short period of time.

Michael Artigues, president of the American College of Pediatricians, told the DCNF that the increase seen over the last few years is likely due to a number of factors such as transgenderism becoming a growing “social phenomenon,” as well as potential financial incentives.

“You have to be concerned about the fact that there’s always money involved, for sure,” Artigues said. “And you’ve got to question whether or not they’re discerning if someone, in particular minors, have a legitimate condition that requires treatment like gender-affirming therapies, as opposed to a social phenomena and or simply mental health problems.”

While the national Planned Parenthood organization does not publicize data on visits related to transgender medical services, such as gender hormone therapy, 12 of the 41 regional Planned Parenthood branches have released relevant data over the past three years. The remaining branches did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

The regional offices varied in how they tracked gender services, with some tracking gender hormone therapy appointments and others tracking visits to their “gender-affirming care” programs; however, many of the regional Planned Parenthood organizations who published their data saw a substantial increase in visits and/or services performed for transgender individuals. Many clinics currently offer “Transgender Hormone Therapy” including estrogen, testosterone and puberty blockers.

Planned Parenthood Mar Monte, which has clinics located in California and parts of Nevada, had 1,041 “gender-affirming care visits” in 2020 before jumping to 4,378 visits in 2022 and eventually hitting 9,288 in 2023, according to its annual reports. The clinic offers hormone therapy for patients who are 18 years and older, or for patients 16 to 17 years old who obtain parental consent, according to its website.

Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, located in Oregon, recorded 344 transgender medical visits in 2018-2019 and 533 in 2019-2020. That number of visits went up to 1,066 in 2020-2021, and the following year it was nearly four times higher at 4,129 visits.

Nationwide, Planned Parenthood saw over 35,000 patients for hormone replacement services appointments in 2021, NPR reported. The organization did not disclose the exact number of gender-related visits in its 2022 annual report but instead listed them under “other procedures,” which totaled 256,550 appointments and included services like “pediatric care … other adult preventive care, and high complexity visits, including infertility services.”

Click here to view the Planned Parenthood Transgender Healthcare Services annual totals for Gender Hormone Therapy Infographic.

Several branches said that their transgender services were some of the fastest-growing areas for their clinics. Planned Parenthood Illinois said in its 2022 report that its transgender hormone therapy is “growing faster than any other service.” The report also noted that “gender-affirming care requires a lifelong continuum of social, psychological, behavioral and medical care.”

Stella O’Malley, psychotherapist and executive director of Genspect, an international group that advocates for a “healthy approach to sex and gender,” told the DCNF that she believes Planned Parenthood has gone from the “medical model, where doctors are bound by the principle to ‘first, do no harm,’ to a more business-like approach that lets the buyer beware.”

“The problem with this is that very vulnerable people who are at their lowest often need guidance and support, not a business-like exchange,” O’Malley said. “Doctors aren’t shopkeepers. They are paid very well because they’re in positions of responsibility, and so they need to meet these responsibilities by being sensitive to the needs of the patient. A one-size-fits-all approach that fast-tracks most patients onto a medicalized pathway is profoundly inappropriate.”

Overall, the cross-sex surgery market is projected to be worth $5 billion in 2023, according to Grand View Research, thanks in large part to more and more Americans identifying as transgender. The cost of routine medical visits for a patient on gender hormones would also be significant.

Only a few of the affiliates reviewed by the DCNF list prices for their gender services; Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri lists a “self-pay fee for a visit” at $250, with additional costs added for any lab work, according to its website. All follow-up visits are $200, plus costs to cover lab work as needed.

Planned Parenthood Pasadena & San Gabriel Valley estimates costs of up to $262 for the first visit, as well as $35 for hormone injection training and up to $48 for lab work, according to its website. Any follow-up visits can cost up to $202.

As of 2022, Planned Parenthood Metropolitan New Jersey said that its new patient consultation for transgender hormones ranged anywhere from $92 to $206, while follow-ups were slightly lower, going from $65 to $173, according to a welcome packet.

Scott Newgent, a detransitioner and founder of TReVoices, an organization that works to stop the medical transitioning of children, told the DCNF that the nature of gender hormone treatments, which must be taken continuously for the remainder of a patient’s life, creates potential repeat customers for organizations like Planned Parenthood.

“It doesn’t matter if they decide to transition or stay trans or whatever,” Newgent said. “They’re going to need those synthetic hormones for life. That’s a huge business model.”

Doctors have also raised concerns over the ease with which one can get a prescription for hormone treatments at Planned Parenthood; the Columbia Willamette affiliate, for instance, says on its website that it provides hormone treatments for patients 18 years and older and does not require a letter from a counselor or doctor recommending hormones for gender dysphoria. Patients can get a prescription after the initial hour-and-a-half appointment.

Erica Anderson, who is transgender and the former president of the U.S. Professional Association for Transgender Health, said that patients have circumvented more traditional methods of getting hormones because it takes too long, opting to go to Planned Parenthood instead, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Click here to view Planned Parenthood Trangender Healthcare Services Infographic.

The DCNF also reviewed an additional eight branches that released only partial data in their annual reports between 2020 and 2022. Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest recorded only 22 “gender-affirming” hormone therapy telehealth visits in 2020 but did not include any data regarding in-person health care center visits for hormone therapy in its annual report.

In 2021, the branch saw 829 telehealth and health care center visits for gender hormones, and in 2022 had 2,426, according to its annual reports.

Planned Parenthood’s St. Louis Region and Southwest Missouri saw 238 visits between July 2020 and June 2021 as it rolled out its “transgender care program,” according to its annual report. Between July 2021 and June 2022, visits for hormone therapy jumped to 1,657.

Click here to view the Planned Parenthood Transgender Healthcare Services 2020 – 2022 Infographic

Planned Parenthood California Central Coast reported 299 “gender-affirming care” initial and follow-up visits for the fiscal year 2019-2020 but logged 746 only two years later in its annual report for 2021-2022. Planned Parenthood Wisconsin in 2020-2021 had 488 hormone therapy visits, but that number jumped to 730 in 2021-2022.

Planned Parenthood Great Northwest reported only 659 “gender-affirming hormone care” visits in 2018 within the first six months of opening its gender program. However, in 2022, the number increased to a staggering 12,814 visits among 5,926 patients. While the Great Northwest branch absorbed the Indiana and Kentucky regions in 2021, those organizations did not list the number of transgender services they provided in their previous annual reports.

There are serious health risks from transgender hormone treatments; minors can become infertile if they receive puberty blockers, while those who transition later could suffer from other conditions such as bone deterioration after trying to come off testosterone.

“Women that get on testosterone for a long period, and then get off of it, their bones deteriorate,” Newgent said. “So I have to get back on testosterone to have my bones safe, but then I have to deal with the other sides of it. So there’s all these medical complications that come with it.”

Planned Parenthood published a series of videos in July acknowledging that patients who take estrogen hormones are at a higher risk of blood clots in the lungs, brain and legs.

Risks for testosterone therapy include blood clots, low blood sugar, high cholesterol and liver issues, according to the videos. Planned Parenthood also suggests that patients receiving hormone therapy should look into “family planning” options, noting that infertility is a potential side effect.

Planned Parenthood should “prioritize evidence-based medicine” and encourage patients, specifically children, to get “intensive psychiatric assessment and care” instead of offering puberty blockers, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, a group of medical professionals that oppose “radical” ideology in health care, said in a statement to the DCNF.

Planned Parenthood did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHORS

MEGAN BROCK AND KATE ANDERSON

Contributors.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: School Staff Appeared To Hide ‘Gender Identity’ Of Bullied Student Being Told To Commit Suicide

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.

Planned Parenthood And Rachel Levine Partnered Up To Peddle Cross-Sex Hormones, Emails Show

  • Planned Parenthood, now a major provider of cross-sex hormones, collaborated with Rachel Levine and several LGBT groups and gender clinics while establishing programs to administer hormones, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. 
  • Levine’s assistant connected the local Planned Parenthood affiliate with a transgender clinic to set up an observation and learn about operations and the referral process, and other members of Levine’s Transgender Health Working Group celebrated the clinic’s eventual administration of hormones. 
  • “Trans-identifying kids are cash cows, and they are kept on the hook for the foreseeable future in terms of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, meetings, etc., whereas abortions are (hopefully) a one-and-done situation,” a former “reproductive health assistant” for a Planned Parenthood clinic previously told Abigail Shrier.

Planned Parenthood collaborated with now-Assistant Secretary for Health Rachel Levine, along with gender clinics and LGBT groups, in its effort to provide cross-sex hormones at its clinics, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Levine, who was acting secretary of health for Pennsylvania in 2017, ran a working group of medical providers and LGBT activists called the Transgender Health Working Group, which included representatives from Planned Parenthood, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) gender clinic and the Mazzoni Center. Levine’s office played an active role in connecting a local Planned Parenthood affiliate with transgender clinics throughout the year it began offering hormones, documents obtained through public records requests show.

The collaboration was part of a broader push from Levine’s office to promote cross-sex treatments that coincided with a meteoric rise in state funding for the procedures, including for children. Six years later, Levine is now a high-ranking Biden official with power to steer federal policy on health care.

“This is such a dangerous ideology, far from any form of health care or medical science,” PA Family communications director Dan Bartkowiak told the DCNF. “Anyone responsible for overseeing the push for more children permanently harmed by these drugs and irreversible surgeries should not be in public office, let alone be given promotion to higher office.”

Levine’s secretary, Sarah Boateng, coordinated with Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania (PPSP) in February 2017 to arrange an observation session at the Mazzoni Center, a Philadelphia-based group offering cross-sex medical treatments, in order to learn about operations and referrals for clinics offering hormones, according to the emails. PPSP had worked with other Planned Parenthood clinics offering hormones, but it was particularly interested in learning from Mazzoni because of its high volume of patients, according to the emails.

“We’re still crossing our fingers about Mazzoni. The volume of daily trans heath [sic] visits at a PP affiliate is low and we fear we’d go and only see a visit or two,” the PPSP worker wrote in the email to Boateng.

By July 2017, PPSP had begun offering hormones at two Pennsylvania clinics, and Levine had visited their offices ahead of the launch, according to the emails.

“Staring this month two Planned Parenthood locations will offer transgender health services, a location in Center City Philadelphia and a location in Pottstown, PA,” Boateng wrote to the working group on July 7. “Dr. Levine and I had a chance to visit their Philadelphia location prior to the launch and we very impressed with the significant planning, training and care they took in developing their program.”

Levine responded that it was “great news” that the Planned Parenthood clinics had begun administering hormones, and CHOP gender clinic co-founder Linda Hawkins offered to collaborate with the group in the same thread.

The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) Gender and Sexuality Development Program offers medical interventions for children seeking gender transitions as young as eight years old, including surgical referrals at age 14. The clinic also partnered with schools in the state to train teachers to use children’s preferred pronouns and keep gender identity issues hidden from parents.

The exact extent of PPSP’s growth in patient visits following this collaboration remains unclear, although its website states that there’s currently a six to eight month wait list for new “gender-affirming care” patients.

PPSP has a policy against prescribing hormones to minors because it requires mental health services and sometimes legal services, although they are considering offering hormones to those under 18 in the future, according to their website.

PPSP continued its involvement with Levine’s LGBT working group throughout 2017, and the group was slated to appear at least four meetings that fall, along with LGBT advocacy groups and gender clinics including the CHOP clinic and the Mazzoni Center, according to emails reviewed by the DCNF. Discussion topics for these meetings included physician training guidelines, appropriate signage within clinics, policy on transgender military participation, “Transgender 101” and “Penn State Hershey – increased access.”

Planned Parenthood is now one of the largest providers of cross-sex hormones in the U.S. A former “reproductive health assistant” reported that the small town Planned Parenthood clinic she worked at saw one to two teen girls each day seeking cross-sex hormones, and that gender transitions for young people brought in more consistent long-term revenue than abortions, according to journalist Abigail Shrier.(RELATED: ‘Paranoia’: Transgender Gun Community Features Fears Of ‘Genocide’, Mental Illness)

“Trans-identifying kids are cash cows, and they are kept on the hook for the foreseeable future in terms of follow-up appointments, bloodwork, meetings, etc., whereas abortions are (hopefully) a one-and-done situation,” she told Shrier.

Planned Parenthood’s national and local offices have focused intensely on transgender issues in recent years, with a particular focus on opposing state-level restrictions on children’s cross-sex medical procedures.

Click here for PAFamily.org infographic: Pennsylvania’s Rise in Taxpayer-Funded Reassignment on Children

Levine’s tenure in the Pennsylvania government ran from 2015 to 2021, during which state spending on cross-sex medical procedures for those 18 and under rose about 5,000%, according to public records obtained by the PA Family Institute. Levine helped bring this to fruition by collaborating with various groups to successfully block state legislation that would have blocked taxpayer funding for child sex changes in 2017.

“The sad reality is, from 2015 to 2021, Pennsylvania saw a nearly 5000% increase in spending on ‘gender-affirming’ care for children 18 and under. That’s evidence of a priority being made by our state officials to harm children with this type of dangerous ideology,” Bartkowiak told the DCNF.

Levine’s time in President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services has been similarly marked by a push for child gender transitions, including official guidance endorsing cross-sex biomedical interventions, such as surgeries, for children.

Levine, Planned Parenthood and PPSP did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHORS

MEGAN BROCK AND LAUREL DUGGAN

Contributors.

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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.

‘Tragic’: Cities Use Federal COVID-19 Money to Fund Abortion, Planned Parenthood

In city governments across the United States, officials are seeking to use federal COVID-19 funds intended to preserve life to fund abortion and benefit the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood, an outcome pro-life leaders call a “tragic” and foreseeable misuse of funds.

Earlier this month, Toledo’s city council proposed ordinance 530-21, which would spend $100,000 in American Rescue Plan funds to pay for Ohio women to travel out of state to obtain an abortion. The funds would go to the Agnes Reynolds Jackson Fund, one of the nation’s network of abortion funds, which defer but do not cover the full price of an abortion — a decision that has outraged state pro-life leaders.

Meanwhile the city of Rochester, New York, has selected Planned Parenthood of Central and Western NY as one of 20 members of its “Rochester Peace Collective,” which will split $5 million in American Rescue Plan funding. Mayor Malik Evans, a Democrat, said the organizations deserve these “front-end investments,” because have the ability “to intervene in the lives of people who maybe have been impacted by violence.” The Toledo ordinance also says its terms are “necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, safety and property.”

Yet pro-life advocates say abortion is violence, not health care. “It is tragic to see the abortion industry once again exploiting a health crisis as a way to line their pockets with taxpayer funding,” Connor Semelsberger, director of federal affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand.

“Using funds allocated for COVID recovery to enable the taking of innocent lives and the harming of mothers and their children is both unjust and immoral,” said Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel E. Thomas. “It is our responsibility as faithful servants of God to spearhead legislation to make it easier for mothers and fathers to flourish economically so they can provide a loving and thriving home for their families.” The Ohio-based Center for Christian Virtue, a state affiliate of FRC, set up a webpage enabling Ohioans to contact Toledo City Council members and politely voice their opposition. “It’s hard to imagine a more gross abuse of taxpayer dollars,” said CCV President Aaron Baer. He may find a receptive audience: Council member Vanice Williams, who supports abortion-on-demand, opposes the measure, because “we really need to hone in on what we spend these ARPA dollars on.”

Similarly, in Rochester, pro-family advocates oppose the $225,000 grant for Planned Parenthood’s sex education program, as it uses taxpayer dollars to link minors to Planned Parenthood’s website.

These cities, which have not yet acted, are far from alone in using federal health care funds to promote abortion. In July St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones, a Democrat, signed a bill using $1 million of federal COVID relief funds to pay for abortion travel, or childcare, for women seeking to have an abortion — something she said fulfilled her campaign promises and dovetailed with her political philosophy. “I said I would fight like hell to make sure St. Louisans can access the reproductive health care they need,” she vowed. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt, a Republican, filed a lawsuit against the measure immediately.

“Atlanta; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Fresno, Calif.; Nashville and Davidson County, Tenn.; New York City; and Seattle directed state or municipal funding to abortion access. Cuyahoga County, Ohio; and St. Louis, Mo., directed funding from the American Rescue Protection Act to abortion access,” reported the far-Left Nation magazine.

Pro-life advocates say the outcome was anything but a surprise. “As the American Rescue Plan Act was being assembled Family Research Council and many other groups warned that” the ARPA funding would underwrite elective abortions “unless the bill clearly defines what healthcare funding can and cannot be used for, or has explicate language to prevent it from subsidizing abortion.”

“The American Rescue Plan Act lacks key abortion funding restrictions,” Semelsberger warned FRC readers at the time. “This is government irresponsibility at its worst,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

Upon passage of the $1.9 trillion plan — which took place in March 2021, as COVID had already begun to recede and the economy was rebounding — Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson hailed President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Democratic congressional leaders as “health care champions” for preserving abortion funding in the American Rescue Plan.

“As Roe becomes a fainting memory it is important to remember that there is no longer a federal right to an abortion as established by our courts and therefore should not be subsidized on the taxpayer’s dime,” Semelsberger told TWS.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. 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.

Social Justice Unionism Means Pro-Abortion Big Labor

Last week, Politico reported on a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade and return the question of abortion regulation to the states, ending the Court’s invention of a constitutional right to abortion. The draft opinion was greeted with predictable outrage from left-progressives, including those in organized labor.

Statements

Now, many people, especially those on the social-conservative right who are re-exploring aligning with organized labor, might not expect union bosses to be among the left-progressive leaders ready to jump on a leaked, not-finalized Supreme Court opinion, but they were. Examples include:

  • Liz Shuler, who ascended to the presidency of the AFL-CIO after the death of Richard Trumka, argued, “We must be able to control our own bodies—which has a direct impact on economic justice and the ability of working people to make a better life for themselves and their families.”
  • Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), denounced an “extremist, anti-woman majority of the Supreme Court” (that, it should be noted, is suspected to include Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a woman) for taking away “a woman’s fundamental right to an abortion.”
  • Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United, said the opinion “should be viewed as part of the broader far-right assault on gender-affirming health rights in this country, including the laws targeting trans youth and their families, attacks on LBGTQ individuals, and homophobic bans on the word ‘gay’ in education,” presumably a deceptive reference to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation, frequently misnamed in “objective” press accounts.

I Told You So

These statements and other pro-abortion activities by organized labor, such as SEIU Healthcare Illinois/Indiana rallying with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) and Planned Parenthood or the new Amazon Labor Union calling for protests in New York City, demonstrate that American labor unions are inseparable from social left-progressivism through an ideological practice known as “social justice unionism.” Back in 2021, we published a serial outlining how organized labor provided financial support to Washington State measures introducing Planned Parenthood–aligned sex education material into public school curriculums.

And what of the expressed hope of Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), that union organizations could provide a counterweight to “a requirement that the workers embrace management’s latest ‘woke’ human resources fad”? Well, I was skeptical, noting that “operatives who run the labor unions endorse woke H.R. fads. And to the extent they don’t, they support going even further.”

Now, I may enter into evidence the statement of Sara Nelson, head of the flight attendants’ union AFA-CWA and rumored candidate to challenge Shuler for the leadership of the House of Labor, last seen campaigning to extend the now-enjoined traveler mask mandate when it came up for renewal in March. Nelson explicitly called on her members’ bosses to engage in woke capitalism:

We call on airline management to stand with us and for equality, anti-discrimination, and mutual respect. It is not enough that corporations espouse these principles as core to their missions—now is the time to demonstrate this commitment to their employees and passengers. This is about our safety and our freedom. We cannot work if we are not safe.

Social justice unionism means that organized labor is an additional pressure point forcing capitalists to be woke, not a point of opposition. The reaction to the Supreme Court leak should prove that beyond doubt.

AUTHOR

Michael Watson

Michael is Research Director for Capital Research Center and serves as the managing editor for InfluenceWatch. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, he previously worked for a…+ MORE BY MICHAEL WATSON

What the Abortion Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know

Abortion thrives in darkness.  Abortion advocates are doing their best to keep people ignorant of the true nature of the abortion business.

There are lots of botched abortions, but the abortion industry tries to cover them up and tell people abortion is ‘safe’. Women have died from botched abortions, but the abortion industry doesn’t want you to know that.  At the moment, there are four lawsuits pending in Alabama, Maryland, and D.C. arising from botched abortions.

Abortion advocates are claiming the abortion drug Mifepristone is safer than Tylenol and sends fewer people to the emergency room.  Nice try.  Here are the facts:  Mifepristone has been linked to 24 deaths and 4,000 serious complications from the year 2000 to 2018. The numbers would be higher but the Obama administration stopped requiring the reporting of non-fatal complications – another cover-up.  The claim the drug is safer than Tylenol is based on a single 2013 study showing a 0.3 percent hospitalization rate, but other studies found much higher hospitalization rates, as high as 20 percent.  But you won’t hear anything about these studies from abortion advocates.

In fact, you won’t hear anything about independent research from abortion advocates, at all.  Instead, the industry pays hired guns for research that, unsurprisingly, concludes abortion is good.  One such study:

reportedly proves that 95 percent of women have no regrets about their abortions and that abortion causes no mental health problems. But a new exposé reveals that the authors have misled the public, using an unrepresentative, highly biased sample and misleading questions. In fact, over two-thirds of the women approached at the abortion clinics refused to be interviewed, and half of those who agreed dropped out. Refusers and dropouts are known to have more post abortion problems.

A public charter school in Boston is teaching ninth-graders abortion prevents pregnancy.  Class material defines abortion as a “procedure performed by a doctor that prevents a pregnancy once the sperm has already joined with an egg.” Critics say the school is misleading students, and the critics are right.  Isn’t there something wrong when you have to resort to misleading gullible youth to stay in business?

The abortion industry doesn’t want you to know lots of workers have quit after seeing the true nature of the abortion business up close.  An abortion clinic worker in Florida quit from feeling guilty after helping “railroad” a woman into a $7,000 late-term abortion.  The worker had been accumulating doubts about the clinic’s obsession with money and that was the final straw.  “I couldn’t face myself in the mirror,” she said.

In another indication abortion advocates don’t want the truth to be known, activists vandalized a pro-life billboard in Mississippi in January, then celebrated the destruction online.  The vandalism turned the billboard’s message about abortion pill reversal treatment into a pitch for abortion drugs, instead.  Activists are throwing smoke-bombs at pro-lifers and threatening violence as they become increasingly unhinged at the prospect of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.

Abortion advocates lied to the press in their campaign to get the Supreme Court to approve abortion in the 1970s.  And they’ve been lying ever since.  This is all they’ve got.   They know they don’t have an argument left.  They’re pathetic and I, for one, can’t wait for the Supreme Court to throw out the federal right to abortion.

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