Americans have long been disturbed by the fraud and waste that often surrounds the federal government’s use of their tax dol­lars. They now have further reason to be up in arms because of the way those tax dollars support the prac­tice of abortion, even though such support, technically speaking, re­mains illegal. 

The 1976 Hyde Amendment, a rider attached by Congress to fed­eral spending bills each year, states that federal tax dollars – particularly for Medicaid – cannot be used to pay for abortions. Yet, approxi­mately half a billion dollars of tax­payer money is received annually by Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of “pregnancy termina­tions” in the United States.

Although Planned Parenthood does not directly receive Medicaid reimbursements for the abortion procedures it performs, the inherent fungibility of funds means that any money provided to Planned Par­enthood ends up supporting and indirectly financing the their pri­mary business, which is elective abortion. Taxpayer funding props up the nation’s largest abortion chain, with more than 300,000 abortions carried out under the auspices of Planned Parenthood each year.

Many Americans object to taxpayer subsidies for this organi­zation, seeking to avoid any co­operation or involvement in the serious evils it promotes.  This is why pro-life Americans and indi­viduals of conscience are urging that the organization be de­funded, to put a stop to the de facto circumventing of the Hyde Amendment that happens every time Planned Parenthood takes advantage of some form of gov­ernment funding.

Yet Planned Parenthood continues to expand like a cancer not only in the U.S., but also globally. As cancer tumors need blood and oxygen for their con­tinued growth, Planned Parent­hood requires a lifeline of gov­ernment aid to support its killing activities. As cancer tumors re­lease special chemicals to make new blood vessels sprout nearby to nourish themselves, so Planned Parenthood continues to tap into a number of federal and state governmental funding sources, including Medicaid and grants from Title X of the Public Health Services Act. Eliminating this financial lifeline would sig­nificantly decrease the availability of direct abortion and diminish its promotion, much as using selec­tive pharmaceuticals to shut down the growth of new blood vessels in tumors can starve them of their lifeline so they wither away.

The Alan Guttmacher Institute, which functions as a research arm of Planned Parenthood, has plainly ac­knowledged the importance of gov­ernmental subsidies:  

“Because Title X grants offer up-front funding to providers (rather than payment after-the-fact, as with Medicaid or private insurance), the program pro­vides essential infrastructure support that allows health cen­ters providing family planning services to keep their doors open for clients. Up-front funding helps supply a cash-flow cushion for providers…”

Despite their "health care pro­vider" veneer, Planned Parenthood is much more of a menace than a bene­fit to the health and well-being of Americans. The organization has faced a string of scandals ranging from the sale of baby body parts to overbilling and unsanitary clinic con­ditions, from cover ups of sexual abuse of minors to botched abor­tions, from falsified medical informa­tion to LGBT activism, to the pro­motion of offensive forms of sex education to impressionable children. As House of Representatives mem­ber Diane Black notes, 

“Planned Parenthood is both the largest abortion provider in America and the largest recipient of Title X dollars. While Title X grants are intended to fund criti­cal women’s health services for low income Americans, Planned Parenthood misuses taxpayer dollars to [subsidize] its abortion services. … Abortion is not healthcare. It destroys one life and damages another.”

The United States needs to eliminate the financial lifeline of Planned Parenthood by defunding the organization of taxpayer dollars. Planned Parenthood supporters, however, argue that if this were to happen, low-income women would not be able to get needed healthcare. Yet federally qualified health centers (community health centers) could be encouraged to take up the slack. They receive broad government funding and offer care regardless of the pa­tient’s ability to pay, making available an even broader array of primary care services than Planned Parenthood does, so women would actually have more health care choices and options. Also, there are many more commu­nity health centers than Planned Par­enthood clinics nationwide.

Jamie Hall and Roger Severino of the Heritage Foundation sum it up this way: 

“To ensure that taxpayers are not forced to subsidize Amer­ica’s number one abortion pro­vider, Congress should make Planned Parenthood affiliates ineligible to receive either Medi­caid reimbursements or Title X grants if they continue to per­form abortions. Taxpayer money from these programs should instead be redirected to the more than 9,000 federally qualified health center sites throughout the country that provide comprehensive primary health care for those in need without entanglement in abor­tion.”

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