With the sweeping win of Republicans across the board on Tuesday, right-to-life activists are hoping that this is the opportunity for them to capitalize and beat back some of the horrid, anti-life moves made by the Obama administration.
The human butcher’s block, known as Planned Parenthood receives $500 million in taxpayer funding every year. The hope of organizations like the Susan B. Anthony List is to defund the organization.
Democrats, of course, have fought every move to do such a thing, framing it as an issue of women’s health.
I’m not really sure how that falls under the heading of “women’s health,” when you consider the massive number of potential women’s lives that are snuffed out in the womb, each year.
“We are teed up to defund Planned Parenthood,” Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser told reporters Wednesday. “We have all that we need now, because we have the perfect lineup.”
Defunding Planned Parenthood is among four abortion-opposing actions President-elect Donald Trump promised to take, in a pledge he signed during the campaign season under pressure from Dannenfelser and other anti-abortion leaders concerned about his commitment to their cause.
In that pledge, Trump also promised to nominate abortion-opposing Supreme Court justices and sign laws banning abortions past 20 weeks of pregnancy and making permanent the Hyde Amendment prohibition on funding abortions with taxpayer dollars.
It’s a campaign promise I’m hoping Trump will actually keep, but how he can make that happen remains in question.
Republicans maintained a simple majority, but do not have the 60 Senate seats required to pass any bill needed to approve defunding. It would also require an amazing amount of arm-twisting to get Senate Democrats to vote against one of their sacred cows – abortion.
For that matter, not every Republican senator is on board with the defund Planned Parenthood plan.
Senators Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, and Susan Collins, of Maine support abortion rights.
If Republicans succeed in defunding Planned Parenthood, the group would lose its largest revenue stream. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said Wednesday that she will fight to ensure clinics stay open regardless of what happens next year.
I actually find that pretty despicable, that the only way they stay open to perform their horrors is by dipping their fingers into the pockets of American citizens, whether they support abortion, or not.
Thanks, Democrats.
Abortion foes interpreted the GOP victories as a rebuke by voters of Planned Parenthood. The group had doubled its election-year spending over 2014 in efforts to get Trump opponent Hillary Clinton and other Democrats elected. And earlier this year, it gave Clinton its first-ever presidential primary endorsement.
“Yesterday, the American people voted for change agents to respect and protect even the smallest and most forgotten among us, including our unborn brothers and sisters,” said David Daleiden, who made the undercover videos targeting Planned Parenthood.
“We can all now unite around common-sense, consensus pro-life policies and leave behind the failed pro-abortion extremism of the past,” he said.
I am in absolute agreement.
Daleiden’s videos of Planned Parenthood staff haggling over the price of dead baby parts became the impetus of renewed fervor on the part of pro-life advocates, as it showed the blatant and callous disregard of innocent life by Democrats and abortion advocates.
The acting president of Americans United for Life, Clarke Forsythe, opined that this election was a rejection of Hillary Clinton and pro-abortion extremism.
“In this election, the abortion industry aligned itself with Hillary Clinton in an unprecedented way, with abortion industry leaders like Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards playing a prominent role in the Clinton campaign,” Forsythe said.
And it was a losing bet.
I do take comfort in that. I just hope Trump doesn’t let them/us down.
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