The House of Representatives will vote on a bill today that would make it easier for states to defund Planned Parenthood. Five states—Utah, Arkansas, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Louisiana—have already done so in the wake of the grotesque undercover videos released by the Center for Medical Progress over the past couple of months. The states, not surprisingly, have faced the wrath of the Obama Administration, which claims that states don’t possess authority under Medicaid to rescind taxpayer funding. So much for that little thing called the Tenth Amendment.
Here’s what the bill, authored by the staunchly pro-life Rep. Sean Duffy, would do, according to Life News:
Photo Credit: Conservative Tribune
H.R. 3495, Women’s Public Health and Safety Act: The bill, authored by pro-life Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) amends the Medicaid law to give states the freedom and discretion to exclude abortion providers from Medicaid. States who have sought to end their Medicaid contracts have been blocked from doing so by the Center for Medicaid and Medicaid Services and the bill would give states more latitude to de-fund.
The National Right to Life has embraced Rep. Duffy’s bill. They explain:
According to a Government Accountability Office report released March 20, 2015, PPFA [Planned Parenthood Federation of America] received $344.5 million in federal funds over three fiscal years (2010-2012), and another $1.2 billion in funding from Medicaid (a combination of state and federal funds), for a three-year total of $1.5 billion from federal programs.
PPFA is also the nation’s largest provider of abortions. Over one-third of all abortions in the U.S. are performed at PPFA-affiliated facilities – indeed, one senior Planned Parenthood official boasted in 2014, “We have 40 percent of the [abortion] market in the whole country.” PPFA now defines abortion as a “core” service, which means that PPFA requires every PPFA affiliate to provide abortions.
Longstanding objections to the massive federal funding of PPFA have been reinforced by recent widely publicized undercover videos, which illuminate involvement by some PPFA affiliates and executives in the harvesting and selling of baby body parts. These highly troubling videos have triggered ongoing investigations by multiple congressional committees and by authorities in many states.
H.R. 3495 would make it clear that federal law does not prevent a state from, at its option, excluding organizations that provide elective abortions from the Medicaid program. We urge you to support this vital legislation. NRLC intends to include the roll call on passage of H.R. 3495 in our scorecard of key pro-life roll calls of the 114th Congress.
You can read the bill here, and read summaries of the contents of the ten undercover videos here.
That number, of course, is now five. It should be fifty.
In case you missed it, last week the Senate Democrats blocked a bill that would have banned late-term abortion. They also blocked a bill that would have defunded Planned Parenthood for one year while an investigation into potential violations of federal law took place. It’s clear the pro-infanticide Democrats want absolutely no limits, including up until the moment before the baby is born and, as some uber-extremist Dr. Mengele-types propose, after birth. Case in point (full blown extremism at the 1:28 mark):
Todd: Are there reasonable restrictions that you would ever support on abortion?
Clinton: I’ve said that there were. And that’s under, that’s under Roe v. Wade, that there can be, uh, restrictions in the very end, uh, of, uh, you know, the third trimester.
FYI, Hillary, that’s called “birth.” My child was born two and half weeks early, and what you’re describing is nothing short of murder.
By the way, reports out yesterday claim Planned Parenthood paid some of those so-called “protesters”—some clad in oh-so-classy birth control pill costumes—who chanted mindless mantras at Carly Fiorina as she held a tailgater in Iowa over the weekend. Nothing like dedicated grass roots activists fighting for their cause!…paid for with our tax dollars, I wonder?
Meanwhile, the head of the Abortion Cult in the House has called for an investigation not into Planned Parenthood, but into the producers of the videos…that she hasn’t watched.
She’s certainly spot on on creating one’s own reality. She’s been living in her own fiction-based universe for decades…but I digress.
While this bill empowering states to make their own decisions regarding defunding Planned Parenthood may pass the Republican-controlled House, it’s highly likely to die an unceremonious death on the Senate floor, just as the late-term abortion ban bill did last week. We are all tasked with protecting Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit, Democrats. If you block this bill—and I predict you will—the blood of millions of precious babes will once again be on your hands.
[UPDATE: 2:00 p.m. Pacific] H.R. 3495 passes the House. From Rep. Duffy’s FaceBook page: “Some states want to refuse this tainted money being used by an awful organization that profits from selling aborted children’s organs, but the Medicaid law and CMS is forcing them to fund abortion providers against the state legislature’s wishes. The Women’s Public Health and Safety Act amends the Medicaid law to empower states with the ability to exclude abortion providers like PP from Medicaid. Very glad to report that this passed with bipartisan support in the House today.”
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