Pro-Life Leaders Urge Congress To Defund Planned Parenthood

Pro-life leaders and members of Congress are focused on statements from House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy indicating that a government shutdown over defunding Planned Parenthood is unlikely.

According to Politico, McCarthy told reporters, “I do not hear people (calling for) shutting the government down over it right now.”

“I think security is becoming the top issue that I am hearing, especially in the last two weeks,” he continued. “Very concerned where the president is and where this country is.”

“I don’t look at the refugee issue as something to get votes for the omnibus” spending bill, McCarthy added. “I look at it as safety for America. … I think that bill needs to pass and become law whichever way it can.”

Pro-life leaders, however, are calling upon Congress to defund the nation’s largest abortion provider.

“First, we need to end all funding to Planned Parenthood, not just temporarily but permanently, and then we need to have government at all levels completely shut it down, as a harmful and destructive organization engaged in crimes against humanity,” Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, tells Breitbart News. “Morally, it’s as simple as that.”

“But politically, there are a lot of steps we need to take on the way to that goal,” he continued. “To so many people, including elected officials, the word ‘abortion’ has lost practically all its meaning. We need to continue to expose its horror. We need to strongly encourage our friends in office to do the things they are willing to do — such as the work of the newly formed Committee on Infant Lives.”

Pavone, the author of Abolishing Abortion, said the nation needs more elected public officials for whom abortion is the primary issue – an endeavor that requires “determined and patient work, over multiple Congresses and presidential administrations.”

“The priority given to ending abortion has to be absolutely first among our concerns — because abortion is terrorism in a much more widespread and destructive way,” he said.

“It isn’t sufficient to say that a government shutdown would not be strategically helpful to achieve this goal, or is not a likely scenario anyway — and then leave it at that,” Pavone added. “We also have to start saying that unless we abolish abortion, we already have shut down the government in a more profound way, because we’ve defeated its purpose — the protection of human lives.”

Rep. Diane Black – who opposes government shutdowns but decided to vote against the last continuing resolution to fund the government because it included funding for Planned Parenthood – tells Breitbart News she would like to see provisions to defund the abortion business in the anticipated omnibus spending bill.

“While I have consistently stated that I oppose government shutdowns, which do nothing to advance the pro-life movement and only embolden our radically pro-abortion President, we should at least be willing to put our ideas on the table and mount a serious fight by including provisions to defund Planned Parenthood in the upcoming omnibus bill,” she said.

Black – the author of the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015 – is a member of the House Select panel that is investigating Planned Parenthood following the release of videos exposing the group’s apparent practices of selling the body parts of aborted babies and altering the position of babies during abortion procedures in order to harvest intact organs.

“At the same time, we must remember that the omnibus is not the only tool at Congress’s disposal to move this effort forward,” she continued. “We continue to urge immediate Senate action on the House-passed reconciliation measure so that we can put a bill to defund Planned Parenthood on President Obama’s desk and show the American people where his priorities truly lie.”

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, stresses how vital it is for Planned Parenthood to be defunded.

“We expect the pro-leaders leaders in Congress to do their job to defund Planned Parenthood,” she tells Breitbart News. “Anything less would be a betrayal of women, children and those who elected them.”