Trump Admin Reinstates Millions of Dollars of Funding to Planned Parenthood
Is the Trump administration ceding too much ground in the fight against abortion?
Last week, President Donald Trump told Republicans negotiating a health care bill in the House of Representatives to be “a little flexible” on the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits tax dollars from funding abortion.
Now, the president has taken another massive step backward in funding Planned Parenthood.
On Tuesday, Politico reported the American Civil Liberties Union has dropped its lawsuit against the Trump administration over tens of millions of taxpayer dollars withheld from Planned Parenthood, allocated under Title X.
In March, providers had been informed of the withholding due to “possible violations” of civil rights laws and executive orders. The HHS said it was examining 16 grantees that collectively operated more than 800 clinics to determine whether they employed diversity, equity, and inclusion practices or “overtly [encouraged] illegal aliens to receive care.”
Funding was restored to some of the clinics last summer, but others continued without funding. As a result, dozens of clinics shut down without plans to reopen, Politico claimed.
But then, the outlet reported, the Trump administration “quietly released the money in December.”
Why did the Trump administration abruptly concede? HHS official Amy Margolis said in a letter to several clinics that “clarifications made by, and actions taken by, the grantees” now meant funds could continue.
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, in a court filing for December, added, “the review is completed, and all grants at issue for Plaintiff’s members have been restored,” which resulted in the ACLU dropping its suit over the matter.
This is a massive blow to the pro-life cause.
The American people have come to expect more.
This is the president who appointed the right justices to the Supreme Court to end Roe v. Wade.
The bar is high for what Trump can do to stop child murder and the organizations that engage in it.
According to the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights, 11 states have “expanded access” to abortion, meaning, “The right to abortion is protected by state statutes or state constitutions, and other laws and policies have created additional access to abortion care.”
Fifteen others have “protected” access, defined as “The right to abortion is protected by state law but there are limitations on access to care.”
That’s more than half the union that endorses the slaughter, with five more falling under the pro-abortion group’s heading of “not protected,” a category for states that still have some access to abortion. (It lists 12 other states as “hostile” to abortion and 13 where the procedure is illegal.)
It’s alarming that the Trump administration apparently gave up and stepped back, allowing the pro-abortion forces to forge ahead on their grim mission of snuffing out the lives of our most vulnerable citizens.
While pro-lifers — who will gather in Washington Jan. 23 for the annual March for Life — were encouraged by Congress’ vote last summer to yank hundreds of millions more dollars in federal Medicaid funds from Planned Parenthood, some fear that that action, too, could be in danger of reversal, since lawmakers “would need to pass another law to extend that cut beyond this summer,” according to Politico.
It may be true that there were complicated legal issues at play in this latest situation, but the Trump administration typically fights much harder than this in the courts over other issues, like immigration, for instance.
This is no time to be ceding ground on this topic, which is of primary importance to many conservatives in Trump’s voter base.
Roe sent abortion back to the states; the next step forward is to starve the machine, not fuel it with tax dollars.
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