{"id":165764,"date":"2017-05-08T09:47:15","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T13:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=165764"},"modified":"2017-05-08T09:49:10","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T13:49:10","slug":"sake-womens-health-senate-must-defund-planned-parenthood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/sake-womens-health-senate-must-defund-planned-parenthood\/","title":{"rendered":"For the sake of women’s health, the Senate must defund Planned Parenthood"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Only 51 votes stand between life and death for thousands of\u00a0human beings this next year as roughly 80 percent of Planned Parenthood\u2019s funding hinges on a vote in the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n

Last week, the U.S. House approved a bill<\/a> which, if passed by a simple majority of the Senate and signed by President Trump, would effectively defund Planned Parenthood’s federal Medicaid budget for one year. If the Senate is to truly represent its constituents and serve the American people, it will vote to defund America’s\u00a0abortion corporation<\/a>. And instead of leaving poor women in need<\/a>, this bill will not only\u00a0remove funding from abortion chain Planned Parenthood, but it\u00a0will also reallocate medical funding dollars, making funding available to the thousands\u00a0of federally-funded comprehensive health care\u00a0clinics in the nation who serve women without killing their\u00a0children.<\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood constantly argues that its government dollars do not go for abortion, but the bottom line is that when the nation\u2019s number one abortion corporation receives a half a billion dollars of taxpayer funding, it\u2019s impossible to separate that from its abortion services. The data may appear in a different column, making it appear that abortions weren\u2019t covered with taxpayer money, but financial fungibility is still a reality<\/a>. Having millions of dollars in taxpayer money frees up the rest of Planned Parenthood’s money to cover abortion, letting the abortion giant dance around the allocation of every dollar and cent, knowing every other service will be reimbursed from Medicaid and other funding sources.<\/p>\n

Imagine the many services at Planned Parenthood associated with an abortion. Besides the abortion procedure, there is the exam, the pregnancy test, any medicines, tests, medical care apart from the procedure, follow-up care, and the list goes on. The majority of\u00a0these services are not technically prohibited from being covered by federal funding, so Planned Parenthood can evade rules and still use taxpayer dollars to enable abortions. (This is not to mention all the Medicaid fraud in billing<\/a> that multiple states have discovered at Planned Parenthood facilities.) Planned Parenthood is a master of itemization, evasion, and corruption, and this is a vital reason the abortion corporation must stop receiving taxpayer money\u00a0immediately<\/em>.<\/p>\n