National pro-life organizations met with Trump administration officials at the White House Wednesday to clear a path to defund Planned Parenthood, even with pro-abortion Democrats poised to take the reins of the U.S. House in January.
Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins, Live Action president Lila Rose, and representatives from the March for Life and the Susan B. Anthony List met with Trump administration officials.
While the pro-life activists acknowledge the administration has fulfilled some of President Donald Trump’s promises to them, Planned Parenthood – the nation’s largest provider of abortions – remains the recipient of more than $500 million in annual taxpayer funding.
“Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion chain in the U.S. and, while receiving taxpayer funds, daily profits from the deaths of 900 preborn children killed in its facilities,” said Rose in a statement sent to Breitbart News.
She repeated the list of serious issues the pro-life base of the GOP has with Planned Parenthood, including that the DOJ is currently investigating the abortion vendor for alleged profiting from the sale of aborted baby body parts, and also that the corporation “regularly lobbies for taxpayer funding of abortions, as well as the repeal of all restrictions on abortions, including restrictions on elective late-term abortions.”
“The CDC reports abortion numbers are declining, but Planned Parenthood’s market share of abortions continues to expand,” Rose said.
In a letter to Trump on the eve of the meeting, Hawkins observed that Planned Parenthood “has infiltrated too many programs and funding streams designed to help women and their children, born and preborn.”
“The places receiving federal dollars should treat everyone as a patient deserving of life,” Hawkins wrote, putting forward five ways the Trump administration can defund the abortion industry giant:
- Refuse to sign any budget that doesn’t defund Planned Parenthood where possible.
- Formalize as quickly as possible the Protect Life rule for the Title X regulations as a starting point for separating abortion providers like Planned Parenthood from family planning dollars.
- Continue to appoint judges who respect life in law.
- End the funding of fetal tissue research through Health and Human Services monies, as abortion providers like Planned Parenthood earn additional monies by selling the broken bodies of aborted infants.
- Sever the connection between sex education and abortion providers through restrictions on federal grants where possible. Planned Parenthood should not be able to use sex education programs as their own person marketing slush fund, to instruct teens to buy their products and engage in behaviors they endorse, and then selling abortions to those same students when their advice and products fail.
“The vast majority of American women will never step into a Planned Parenthood facility in a given year,” Hawkins told Trump, adding:
The health services they try to claim a monopoly on are better performed by Federally Qualified Health Centers. Compared to these community health centers, Planned Parenthood serves millions fewer patients, provides dozens fewer services, and spends their money far more inefficiently.
“We ask the president to veto any funding bill that does not explicitly defund Planned Parenthood,” Rose asserted. “To save the lives of innocent children and to end this corrupt bargain between Planned Parenthood and pro-abortion politicians, the president must follow through on his campaign pledge.”