With the unveiling of the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare Monday, the 7 year nightmare of nationalized healthcare is coming to a close. After the ACA was passed on a straight-party vote of Democrats in 2010, Americans watched as premiums skyrocketed, choices disappeared, and jobs were lost. By repealing Obamacare and putting free-market principles back into the healthcare market, premium costs will decrease, access to care will improve, and states will play the leading role in healthcare again in this country. While there are certainly changes still needed to improve the new replace plan, namely that all of the Obamacare regulatory burden needs to be repealed, it is still a concrete step toward conservative reform that is long overdue.

One of the best provisions of the replacement plan is that it finally defunds Planned Parenthood, which will save American lives as well as tax dollars. Whereas Obamacare contained countless coverage mandates in a one-size-fits-all approach, the Republican plan empowers people to pick their own care plan coverages and excludes funding for America’s abortion giant. By defunding Planned Parenthood in its healthcare plan, the Republican Congress is laying-down the gauntlet on its commitment to protecting human life. By repealing a healthcare law that undermined quality of life through its onerous mandates, while cutting-off tax funding for abortions, the Republican majority has affirmed that being pro-life means protecting and valuing human life from the womb to natural death.

By defunding Planned Parenthood in its healthcare reform package, the GOP Congress made clear that being fiscally and socially conservative go hand-in-hand. Correlation comparison studies have repeatedly found that members of Congress who are pro-life are nearly always fiscal conservatives, while fiscal conservatives are almost always pro-life. It seems that valuing human life means also valuing the fruit of human labor and production, which leads to less wasteful spending and lower deficits.

If the Republican Congress makes valuing human life and the fruit of human labor its guideposts for its reform agenda, our country will be more just, generous, and wealthy as a result.