US Government Cuts Off Abortion Funds
04.04.2019
Two separate moves by the US administration will reduce the amount of taxpayers’ money spent on abortion. The amount of money going to Planned Parenthood through Title X grants will be cut by about $44 million a year, while a change to the Mexico City Policy will prevent groups providing abortions from getting international aid grants via non-abortion-providing third parties.
The grant announcement was made on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) website. Among those no longer receiving Title X grants are Planned Parenthood affiliates in five states: Hawaii, North Carolina, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Virginia, according to the abortion group’s website. Title X grants fund family planning services for people on low incomes.
Planned Parenthood’s $16 million-a-year allotment is a steep drop from the $50 to 60 million the group had been receiving annually. The change amounts to about a $44 million cut in taxpayer funding to Planned Parenthood annually.
Meanwhile, the pro-life Obria Group will receive $1.7 million a year in Title X grants to provide comprehensive family planning services to low-income clients in California. Its services include pregnancy testing and counselling, prenatal care, HIV/AIDS testing, ultrasounds, cancer testing, well-woman care, pap smears, STD testing and treatment, adoption referral and post-abortion support. Obria runs 21 health clinics and 11 mobile clinics in five states, and does not perform or promote abortions.
The new “Protect Life” rule prohibits Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses from receiving any Title X funds unless they completely separate their abortion businesses from their taxpayer-funded services. That means housing their family planning services in separate buildings with separate staff from their abortion businesses and a denial of funds if they fail to do so. Most Planned Parenthood entities are not expected to comply.
In a refinement to the administration’s Mexico City policy, announced by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the ban on federal funding, which already applied to foreign NGOs that “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning,” will now be extended to “foreign NGOs that give to other foreign groups in the global abortion industry.”
“American taxpayer dollars will not be used to underwrite abortions,” Secretary Pompeo said.
Reinstating the Mexico City policy was among one of the first executive orders President Donald Trump signed upon entering office in 2017. Pompeo said that Mr. Trump “boldly” expanded the policy “which now protects every human life impacted by the nearly $9 billion dollars of foreign aid we spend on global health programs each year, and in turn, protects more unborn babies than ever before.”
A recent poll found that, by a double-digit margin, a majority of all Americans oppose any taxpayer funding of abortion (54 per cent to 39 per cent).