News-Sentinel
Liz Brown: It’s time to end funding for Planned Parenthood
September 28, 2015
What will it take for Congress to act?
Planned Parenthood uses abortion to end the lives of more than 300,000 children annually. That’s like wiping out the population of Allen County every year. Bold investigators, like Lila Rose, have shown us that Planned Parenthood turns a blind eye to sex trafficking and race-selective abortion. We’ve known about these atrocities, yet Congress has refused to take meaningful action.
Starting in July, we have been learning about another angle of Planned Parenthood’s abortion business. The Center for Medical Progress videos, now numbering in the double digits, have shown us senior Planned Parenthood officials negotiating the sale and harvest of aborted baby body parts. They have officials on tape explaining how they alter abortion procedures to get intact organs.
A former employee gave an eyewitness account of a late-term aborted baby lying on the table, his heart still beating. How are these atrocities happening in a civilized nation? It’s time that Congress finally ends our tax dollars from going to such a sinister organization.
Each year, Planned Parenthood rakes in more than half a billion dollars in government funding. Congress must pass a spending bill by Wednesday. Congress has a true opportunity to defund the abortion giant. I want to see Congress send President Obama a bill that defunds Planned Parenthood and redirects the funds to abortion-free health organizations for women.
Congress can put the ball in Obama’s court. Let him explain to us why Planned Parenthood deserves our tax dollars and why he believes women need Planned Parenthood. The truth is, women don’t need Planned Parenthood. The half a billion dollars that Planned Parenthood receives is better spent on health providers that truly help women.
Planned Parenthood wants you to believe that it is the only option for women, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Indiana has 19 federally qualified health centers that run 108 locations, which assist low-income Hoosier women throughout the state. These providers, along with rural health centers and other Medicaid providers, already receive government funding and are ready to help underserved women seeking abortion-free care.
Planned Parenthood’s business model is built around abortion and sexual health. Federally qualified health centers, by comparison, focus on comprehensive health care. For example, if you need a mammogram, don’t bother to call Planned Parenthood. None of Planned Parenthood’s 665 facilities even do mammograms. When Planned Parenthood loses taxpayer funding, women will still receive health care.
Earlier this month, a woman named Gianna Jessen testified before a U.S. House committee. She shared how 38 years ago, her biological mother entered a Planned Parenthood and tried to end her life at 71/2 months by a late-term abortion. Jessen miraculously survived. She asked the committee, “If abortion is about women’s rights, then what were mine?”
Bureaucrats in Washington pay lip service to the “right to life” as a foundational principle, but for the nearly 900 babies aborted each day at Planned Parenthood, this is not enough. It’s time for Congress to take a stand. It’s time for “we the people” to take a stand, and force Congress to remove funding from America’s largest abortion provider. The time to defund Planned Parenthood is now.
Liz Brown is Indiana senator, District 15 and candidate for Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District.
Click here to read the column on the News-Sentinel website.
