The Patriot Post® · Planned Parenthood Fights Defunding Efforts
Texas Governor Greg Abbott informed Planned Parenthood that it would be dropped from the state’s Medicaid program. Abbott, a Republican, issued a press release Monday explaining, “The gruesome harvesting of baby body parts by Planned Parenthood will not be allowed in Texas and the barbaric practice must be brought to an end.” Amen to that.
Undercover videos from The Center for Medical Progress exposed PP employees describing the harvesting of body parts from aborted babies. The fifth video was filmed in Houston and featured regional Director of Research Melissa Farrell, who implied that abortionists could change the procedure in order to obtain better “specimens.” Farrell said, “If we alter our process, and we are able to obtain intact fetal cadavers, we can make it part of the budget that any dissections are this, and splitting the specimens into different shipments is this. It’s all just a matter of line items.”
Planned Parenthood reacted by pretending that women will no longer have access to health care. Executive Vice President Dawn Laguens called the Texas defunding “outrageous” and blamed it on “thoroughly discredited, fraudulent videos.” She claimed this will “cut women off from preventive health care.” PP has long sought to brand itself as synonymous with women’s health care, but, as CEO Cecile Richards admitted to Congress last month, the organization doesn’t own or operate a single mammogram machine.
However, Abbott made clear that excluding PP “will not affect access to care because there are thousands of alternate providers in Texas.” The governor also requested “cooperation in informing all clients” where to obtain Medicaid services from “providers in good standing.”
Three other states have also defunded PP, including neighboring Louisiana. When the latter’s governor, Bobby Jindal, excluded the abortion organization from his state’s Medicaid reimbursement program, PP promptly sued him, which resulted in a temporary restraining order signed by U.S. District Judge John deGravelles Sunday. Louisiana must continue funding PP for the next two weeks. It is not yet known whether PP will bring a similar lawsuit against Texas.
On Monday, Jindal said, “I hope every governor will defund Planned Parenthood. They can’t sue us all.”
Louisiana intends to appeal the restraining order. Jindal spokesman Mike Reed said, “Instead of going through the same administrative review as any other Medicaid provider, they are running to the federal courts and asking for special treatment.” Just how much special treatment? Fox News calculates PP has received over $4 billion in government funding over the past 10 years.
No wonder PP is fighting back with lawsuits.
Selling human fetal body parts is not only repulsive, it’s a felony. However, Cecile Richards claimed the agency has never sold tissue but rather donated it at cost. Nevertheless, the abortion giant announced earlier this month that it would no longer accept reimbursements for donating body parts.
However, this is too little, too late for many, including Tennessee Rep. Diane Black, who intends to continue defunding efforts. “It is curious that, while Planned Parenthood officials maintain there has been no wrongdoing, they still find it necessary to change their policy,” Black said. “Clearly, this was a decision motivated by optics rather than the organization’s conscience.”
CMP’s reaction: “This only raises more serious questions about what Planned Parenthood leadership has been allowing its clinics to do with money and baby parts, and intensifies the need for Congress to pursue full auditing and oversight of Planned Parenthood’s unaccountable criminal enterprise of baby parts trafficking.”
Harvesting baby organs for free isn’t going to cut it. If PP declines reimbursement for slicing through the face of a fetus to obtain the brain, who will pay the bill for this extra labor? The taxpayer?
By changing its policy to donate parts without reimbursement, it appears Richards is missing the point. As appalling as paying for body parts is, the action of killing the baby in the first place is most horrific. “Fetal tissue donation” exposes the lie that abortion merely removes an unwanted clump of cells.
Understanding how horrendous it sounds to carve out baby hearts, lungs and eyeballs, PP realized it needed a public relations makeover and hired the “Democratically aligned” communications firm SKDKnickerbocker for damage control by the time CMP released its third video.
Defunding is important to stop the flow of tax dollars into the coffers of PP. But these undercover videos are even more crucial in swaying the hearts and minds of Americans as they witness what goes on behind the scenes at an abortion clinic. Seeing is believing.
Planned Parenthood, you’ve come a long way, baby, from “women’s health care.” Now, it’s simply “Baby Body Parts.”