01 May 2011 51 Million Reasons to End Federally Funded Abortions, by Jerome Hudson
New Visions Commentary
Posted at 03:35h in Health, Project 21, Project 21 New Visions by The National Center
Pro-life activists exposed serious abuses at Planned Parenthood. There was outrage from the left.
In offices around America, actors pretending to be a pimp and an underage girl taped Planned Parenthood employees giving out advice about obtaining illegal abortions and getting back into the sex trade as quickly as possible without running afoul of the law.
Exposure of these prohibited practices at facilities supported by taxpayer dollars played an obvious role in the U.S. House of Representatives vote to strip Planned Parenthood of funding on February 18 and the demand from many lawmakers that a ban be included on any long-term budget bill.
The lament from the left? It's not about laws being broken — it's that conservatives allegedly want women and children to die.
Even though Planned Parenthood was the bad actor — and admitted as much by firing at least one employee caught on tape — the left's abortion bias is too strong.
Indeed, the American left holds few things in such high esteem as a woman's "right" to "choose" to terminate a pre-born baby. What is getting harder to defend is why taxpayers should help foot any of Planned Parenthood's expenses.
In fact, a 2009 Gallup poll found that 51 percent of Americans self-identify themselves as pro-life. Why must these people contribute through taxes to a private group engaged in marketing a procedure they morally oppose that has already caused killed 51 million unborn babies?
In media interviews and slick ad campaigns, the mantra of Planned Parenthood and its defenders is that shutting off the federal spigot will force their clinics to reduce or discontinue counseling services, HIV testing, cancer screenings and other non-abortion family planning services.
Right to Life of Michigan reports that, in 2009, Planned Parenthood performed 332,278 abortions and that a quarter of all abortions performed in America are at Planned Parenthood facilities. For every pre-natal patient, there are allegedly 47 customers for abortions and 340 abortions for every adoption referral made from Planned Parenthood.
In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2009, Planned Parenthood reported more than $1.1 billion in revenue — over $363 million of it from government grants and contracts.
This doesn't mean that all — or any — federal funds directly paid for abortions. Planned Parenthood has not been charged with violating laws such as the Hyde Amendment. But money is fungible. A federal grant to provide counseling services, for instance, may open up funds previously budgeted to counseling to later be spent on other things such as abortion.
It's the desire to remove all doubt by removing all federal funds from Planned Parenthood — just in case — that motivated lawmakers to back the congressional ban.
Thatsabortion.com reports that 70 percent of all abortion factories are concentrated in minority neighborhoods. While black childbearing women make up a small percentage of the population, they comprise a heartbreaking 30 percent of abortions. Hispanic women make up a similarly disproportionate 25 percent.
It smacks of racial population control, especially considering that population control advocate Fredrick Osborn proclaimed, in 1971, that "birth control and abortion are proving to be the great eugenics advances of our time."
It seems that, now that blacks are no longer relegated to the preverbal back seat of the bus, abortion is a new obstacle.
That's why former governor Mike Huckabee says the "abortion issue trumps all." It's the new civil rights issue of our time.
Meanwhile, special interests such as NOW, the NAACP and The National Council of La Raza and others are not surprisingly siding with Planned Parenthood. They seem intent to ignore what makes sense morally to fight for what gains power politically.
It's mindboggling that these self-proclaimed purveyors of unremitting compassion are among the biggest defenders of abortion-on-demand.
Our nation is deep in a financial abyss. In addition to our fiscal bankruptcy, must we turn a blind eye to the daily destruction of human life and become morally bankrupt as well?
Jerome Hudson is a member of the national advisory council of the black leadership network Project 21. Comments may be sent to [email protected].
Published by the National Center for Public Policy Research. Reprints permitted provided source is credited. New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, and not necessarily those of Project 21, other Project 21 members, or the National Center for Public Policy Research, its board or staff.