President Donald Trump Signs Bill to Overturn Obama Rule Forcing States to Fund Planned Parenthood
Authored by Steven Ertelt | President LifeNews.com | Apr 13, 2017 | 11:37AM Washington, DC
URL of the original posting site: http://www.lifenews.com/2017/04/13/president-donald-trump-to-sign-bill-to-overturn-obama-rule-forcing-states-to-fund-planned-parenthood/
President Donald Trump signed into law today a bill to overturn a rule pro-abortion President Barack Obama put in place preventing states from defunding the Planned Parenthood abortion business. The rule from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) prevented states from blocking Title X funding to abortion companies like Planned Parenthood.
After the House first passed the measure, the Senate voted 50-50 for the bill, with a couple of liberal pro-abortion Republicans joining Democrats in supporting the abortion giant and Republicans voting pro-life. The tie vote made it so pro-life Vice-President Mike Pence cast the tie-breaking vote to approve the measure.
Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser will be at the bill signing and talked with LifeNews.com about it.
“This week the pro-life movement had two huge victories: first, the swearing-in of Justice Gorsuch and now, President Trump will undo former President Obama’s parting gift to the abortion industry. The resolution signed today simply ensures that states are not forced to fund an abortion business with taxpayer dollars. Rather, states have the option to spend Title X money on comprehensive health care clinics that better serve women and girls,” she said.
“We thank President Trump, Vice President Pence, who cast the tie breaking vote last month, as well as the women who led this effort in Congress, Rep. Diane Black and Sen. Joni Ernst. Prioritizing funding away from Planned Parenthood to comprehensive health care alternatives is a winning issue. We expect to see Congress continue its efforts to redirect additional taxpayer funding away from Planned Parenthood through pro-life health care reform after the spring recess,” she added.
In recent years, several states receiving Title X family planning grants have opted to direct those funds to county health departments, community health centers, or other types of providers, in preference to organizations engaged in objectionable activities, such as Planned Parenthood, a mega-marketer of abortion that has also been involved in selling aborted baby parts.
H.J. Res. 43, once Trump signs it, would mean that states, if they chose, could continue to attempt to redirect Title X funds away from objectionable organizations like Planned Parenthood.
SIGN THE PETITION! Congress Must De-Fund Planned Parenthood Immediately
Senator Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) were behind the bills to overturn the rule.
“State legislatures around the country have spoken out about their preference for prioritizing more comprehensive primary and preventative care providers for the receipt of Title X funding,” the duo wrote in a joint op-ed for the Washington Examiner, “and their voice should be respected by bureaucrats in the federal government.”
“According to its 2014-2015 annual report, Planned Parenthood performed 323,999 abortion procedures in just one year. Taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize the abortion industry in this country. Nor should they be forced to foot the bill for an organization like Planned Parenthood that has displayed such blatant disregard for human life.”
“With a pro-life president in the White House and pro-life majorities in the House and Senate, we will continue to work together this year to undo the damage done by the Obama administration,” the women write.
Leading pro-life groups like National Right to Life supported the bill. In its letter to House members, NRLC wrote: “Over one-third of all abortions in the U.S. are performed at PPFA-affiliated facilities. Longstanding objections to the massive governmental funding of PPFA have been reinforced by widely publicized undercover videos, which illuminate the callous brutality that occurs daily in these abortion mills.”
Other groups also applauded the House.
“President Obama’s parting gift to the abortion industry was in keeping with his Administration’s actions over the last eight years. At every turn, then-President Obama thwarted efforts by state and local authorities – who were acting on the will of the people – to prioritize taxpayer funding away from Big Abortion,” said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser. “Obama’s legacy of forcing Americans to finance the abortion industry is being steadily dismantled by our new pro-life President and the pro-life Congress. We look forward to swift passage of this resolution in the Senate so that it can receive President Trump’s signature.”
She told LifeNews: “Planned Parenthood which, according to their latest annual report, performed 323,999 abortions in a single year, does not need or deserve taxpayer dollars. We thank Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) for leading the effort to overturn this unpopular rule. Their leadership reflects the truth that women largely support stopping taxpayer funding of the abortion industry and redirecting funds to centers that offer real health care.”
Recently, two new videos showed former Planned Parenthood employees discussing how women were “treated like cattle” and “herded” through clinics. In last week’s video, a former manager admitted Planned Parenthood had “abortion quotas” that, if met, would result in pizza parties. Other videos have exposed Planned Parenthood’s claim of providing prenatal services and demonstrated that ultrasounds are used almost exclusively for abortion.
Here’s an example of how Obama’s rule has prevented states from revoking taxpayer funding for the abortion company Planned Parenthood.
Under current state law, the state of Tennessee doles out Title X funding provided by HHS to county health departments, who then determine appropriate sub-grantees. All 95 counties have identified community health centers and other providers aside from Planned Parenthood who meet all Title X eligibility criteria to receive this funding, effectively cutting off Planned Parenthood’s access to Title X funds in the state of Tennessee.
The rule from HHS cites other examples of states such as Florida and Texas enacting or attempting to enact similar measures. The rule undermines such state laws, explaining that it “precludes project recipients [states] from using criteria in their selection of subrecipients that are unrelated to the ability to deliver services to program beneficiaries in an effective manner.”
The expose’ videos catching Planned Parenthood officials selling the body parts of aborted babies have shocked the nation. Here is a list of all thirteen:
- In the first video: Dr. Deborah Nucatola of Planned Parenthood commented on baby-crushing: “We’ve been very good at getting heart, lung, liver, because we know that, so I’m not gonna crush that part, I’m gonna basically crush below, I’m gonna crush above, and I’m gonna see if I can get it all intact.”
- In the second video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Mary Gatter joked, “I want a Lamborghini” as she negotiated the best price for baby parts.
- In the third video: Holly O’Donnell, a former Stem Express employee who worked inside a Planned Parenthood clinic, detailed first-hand the unspeakable atrocities and how she fainted in horror over handling baby legs.
- In the fourth video: Planned Parenthood’s Dr. Savita Ginde stated, “We don’t want to do just a flat-fee (per baby) of like, $200. A per-item thing works a little better, just because we can see how much we can get out of it.” She also laughed while looking at a plate of fetal kidneys that were “good to go.”
- In the fifth video: Melissa Farrell of Planned Parenthood-Gulf Coast in Houston boasted of Planned Parenthood’s skill in obtaining “intact fetal cadavers” and how her “research” department “contributes so much to the bottom line of our organization here, you know we’re one of the largest affiliates, our Research Department is the largest in the United States.”
- In the sixth video: Holly O’Donnell described technicians taking fetal parts without patient consent: “There were times when they would just take what they wanted. And these mothers don’t know. And there’s no way they would know.”
- In the seventh and perhaps most disturbing video: Holly O’Donnell described the harvesting, or “procurement,” of organs from a nearly intact late-term fetus aborted at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte’s Alameda clinic in San Jose, CA. “‘You want to see something kind of cool,’” O’Donnell says her supervisor asked her. “And she just taps the heart, and it starts beating. And I’m sitting here and I’m looking at this fetus, and its heart is beating, and I don’t know what to think.”
- In the eighth video: StemExpress CEO Cate Dyer admits Planned Parenthood sells “a lot of” fully intact aborted babies.
- The ninth video: catches a Planned Parenthood medical director discussing how the abortion company sells fully intact aborted babies — including one who “just fell out” of the womb.
- The 10th video: catches the nation’s biggest abortion business selling specific body parts — including the heart, eyes and “gonads” of unborn babies. The video also shows the shocking ways in which Planned Parenthood officials admit that they are breaking federal law by selling aborted baby body parts for profit.
- Unreleased Videos: Unreleased videos from CMP show Deb Vanderhei of Planned Parenthood caught on tape talking about how Planned Parenthood abortion business affiliates may “want to increase revenue [from selling baby parts] but we can’t stop them…” Another video has a woman talking about the “financial incentives” of selling aborted baby body parts.
- The 11th video: catches a Texas Planned Parenthood abortionist planning to sell the intact heads of aborted babies for research. Amna Dermish is caught on tape describing an illegal partial-birth abortion procedure to terminate living, late-term unborn babies which she hopes will yield intact fetal heads for brain harvesting.
- The 12th video in the series shows new footage of Jennefer Russo, medical director at Planned Parenthood in Orange County, California, describing to undercover investigators how her abortion business tries to harvest intact aborted babies’ bodies for a local for-profit biotech company and changes the abortion procedure to do so.
- The 13th video: exposes a Planned Parenthood medical director admitting that babies born alive after abortion are sometimes killed.
The Last Refuge
The celebrities, political activists, and anti-oil extremists who are blocking the pipeline’s progress are doing so based on highly charged emotions rather than actual facts on the ground.
This 1,172-mile Dakota Access pipeline will deliver as many as 570,000 barrels of oil a day from northwestern North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to connect to existing pipelines in Illinois. It will do this job far more safely than the current method of transporting it by 750 rail cars a day.
The protesters say they object to the pipeline’s being close to the water intake of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation. However, this should be of no concern as it will sit approximately 92 feet below the riverbed, with increased pipe thickness and control valves at both ends of the crossing to reduce the risk of an incident, which is already low.
Just like the companies that run the 10 other fossil-fuel pipelines crossing the Missouri River upstream of Standing Rock, Energy Transfer Partners—the primary funder of this pipeline—is taking all necessary precautions to ensure that the pipeline does not leak.
But even if there were a risk, Standing Rock will soon have a new water intake that is nearing completion much further downstream near Mobridge, South Dakota.
From the outset of this process, Standing Rock Sioux leaders have refused to sit down and meet with either the Army Corps of Engineers or the pipeline company. The Army Corps consulted with 55 Native American tribes at least 389 times, after which they proposed 140 variations of the route to avoid culturally sensitive areas in North Dakota. The logical time for Standing Rock tribal leaders to share their concerns would have been at these meetings, not now when construction is already near completion.
The original pipeline was always planned for south of Bismarck, despite false claims that it was originally planned for north of Bismarck and later moved, thus creating a greater environmental danger to the Standing Rock Sioux.
The real reasons for not pursuing the northern route were that the pipeline would have affected an additional 165 acres of land, 48 extra miles of previously undisturbed field areas, and an additional 33 waterbodies.
It would also have crossed zones marked by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration as “high consequence” areas, and would have been 11 miles longer than the preferred and current route.
North Dakotans have respected the rights of these individuals to protest the pipeline, but they have gone beyond civil protesting. Though these protesters claim to be gathered for peaceful prayer and meditation, law enforcement has been forced to arrest more than 400 in response to several unlawful incidents, including trespassing on and damaging private land, chaining themselves to equipment, burning tires and fields, damaging cars and a bridge, harassing residents of nearby farms and ranches, and killing and butchering livestock. There was even at least one reported incident where gun shots were fired at police.
The recent vandalization of graves in a Bismarck cemetery and the unconscionable graffiti marking on the North Dakota column at the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., are examples of how the protesters’ actions do not match their claims of peaceful demonstration.
Equally disturbing is the meddling by the Obama administration in trying to block this legally permitted project through executive policymaking. This has encouraged more civil disobedience, threatened the safety of local residents, and placed an onerous financial burden on local law enforcement—with no offer of federal reimbursement for these increasing costs.
All that remains for the pipeline project to be completed is for the Army Corps of Engineers to issue a final easement to cross the Missouri River at Lake Oahe. With no legal reason remaining to not issue it, I am confident the Trump administration will do what’s right if it’s not settled before President Donald Trump takes office.
The simple fact is that our nation will continue to produce and consume oil, and pipelines are the safest and most efficient way to transport it. Legally permitted infrastructure projects must be allowed to proceed without threat of improper governmental meddling.
The rule of law matters. We cannot allow lawless mobs to obstruct projects that have met all legal requirements to proceed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rep. Kevin Cramer/ @RepKevinCramer