{"id":232099,"date":"2020-10-05T18:34:37","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T23:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=232099"},"modified":"2020-10-05T15:23:09","modified_gmt":"2020-10-05T20:23:09","slug":"just-defund-planned-parenthood-already-heres","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/just-defund-planned-parenthood-already-heres\/","title":{"rendered":"Just defund Planned Parenthood already \u2014 here\u2019s how"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(National Review<\/a>)\u00a0P<\/span>resident Trump<\/span> has made important strides in protecting children in the womb, from ending experimentation on aborted children at government laboratories<\/a> and implementing new protections<\/a> to stop these abuses for the first time ever, to appointing a record number of pro-life judges<\/a> to the federal courts. President Trump\u2019s administration has also begun<\/a> the federal defunding of the abortion industry by enforcing Title X as originally written in 1970, to ensure no taxpayer grants go to programs such as Planned Parenthood\u2019s, where abortion is a method of family planning.<\/p>\n

In his September 3 letter to pro-life Americans<\/a>, Trump committed to fully stop the flow of taxpayer subsidies to the abortion industry writing, \u201cTogether we will work to . . . fully defund the big abortion industry such as Planned Parenthood of our tax dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how to do that right now.<\/p>\n

President Trump can direct the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to use its discretionary authority to exclude the Planned Parenthood network from all federal health-care spending. To promote program integrity, Medicaid\u2019s authorizing statutes<\/a> give HHS the responsibility to bar entities from participating in Medicaid or other programs if HHS finds serious wrongdoing. States such as Texas<\/a> and Arkansas<\/a> have already taken this route. The endemic violations across Planned Parenthood\u2019s network \u2014 such as defrauding a taxpayer- funded program<\/a> and decrepit clinical practices<\/a> that are unethical at best and flagrantly criminal at worst \u2014 would more than justify such an action by HHS now.<\/p>\n

Planned Parenthood is the leading abortion provider in America, extinguishing 345,672 preborn children last year<\/a>.\u00a0That alone makes its ongoing Medicaid windfall extremely suspect. Medicaid\u2019s 1972 family-planning-services provision, passed after Title X and before Roe v. Wade<\/em>, never authorized abortion funding in the first place. Former employees have reported that Planned Parenthood enforces minimum abortion quotas<\/a> on its clinics. As a result, its share of the U.S. abortion market is expanding as the amount of health services (such as breast exams) performed at Planned Parenthood clinics is decreasing<\/a>.<\/p>\n