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It’s illegal to use taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions, but through creative accounting Big Abortion and its government allies are unashamedly making an end run around the law.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that nearly $2 billion in federal funding went to Planned Parenthood from 2019 to 2021, even as it performed 1.11 million abortions.
Its report, released on Tuesday, showed that $1.89 billion in federal grants was given to abortion groups, including $1.78 billion to Planned Parenthood. The sources for this money included direct funding, grants, and cooperative agreements, as well as reimbursements from Medicare, Medicaid, and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Planned Parenthood organizations also received $90 million through the 2020 CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program, funding that was to be given only to small businesses with 500 or fewer employees. Planned Parenthood has over 16,000 employees.
Some U.S. lawmakers are arguing that Planned Parenthood illegally took the Paycheck Protection funding.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., stated, “While small businesses struggled to make ends meet during the pandemic, Planned Parenthood illegally siphoned over $90 million from the Paycheck Protection Program, specifically designed to help our mom and pop shops keep their doors open.”
The GAO found that 38 Planned Parenthood affiliates received 44 Paycheck Protection Program loans, ranging from about $500,000 to $10 million. The entirety of those loans were forgiven as of May 1.
The Small Business Administration’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) said in September 2022 that Planned Parenthood chapters were eligible for the loans. “We found it is not likely that affiliation existed with its member organizations,” the OIG stated. “All three national organizations we reviewed have delegated autonomy to its members and recognized its members in its bylaws as independent organizations. We found no affiliation between the national organizations and the loan recipients.”
In 2022, the Department of Health and Human Services also gave Planned Parenthood $27.06 million, in jump of 373 percent from the $5.71 million provided in 2021.
The issue of providing federal grants and other funds to abortion providers is controversial. The Hyde Amendment makes it illegal to provide federal funds to pay for abortions in the U.S., but Planned Parenthood is able to receive federal monies so long as those monies are earmarked and used for other purposes. Opponents say that this is an end run around the law because Planned Parenthood’s financial position and thus its ability to perform abortions is automatically bolstered by the injection of federal funds.
It wasn’t just the U.S. operations of Planned Parenthood that received federal funding; International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) received $2.03 million. IPPF says it performed 5 million abortions in 2022. The use of federal funds for abortions in foreign locations is prohibited by the Helms Amendment.
A Marist poll in January 2023 found that 60 percent of Americans surveyed oppose or strongly oppose federal funding for abortion in the U.S., while 78 percent of Americans polled oppose or strongly oppose federal funding being used to pay for abortions in other countries.
Other abortion groups that received federal funding, according to the GAO report, included MSI Reproductive Choices, which received $1.35 million; it claims to have performed 4 million abortions in 37 countries in 2021 and seeks to expand until it is providing one-third of all abortions in its service area. Four unnamed “domestic regional organizations” received $107.74 million in federal funds.
Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers have killed millions of American children — and the U.S. government is effectively paying them to do it.
In the three-year period of the GAO report, Planned Parenthood alone killed 1.11 million children and was paid nearly $2 billion in federal funding. That is supposed to be against the law. Americans, the majority of which don’t want their tax dollars spent this way, are forced to be complicit in killing vulnerable and innocent children — and not just in this country but in countries around the world.
Why is this so? Because pro-abortion zealots in our government find creative ways to make taxpayers pay for abortion. They’ll say that the money is for rent or to pay salaries or for office supplies, but in receiving those grants, abortion providers can take the money that had been earmarked for rent, salaries, and office supplies and use it to perform more abortions. This is no different than giving billions of dollars to Iran, the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, and insisting that the money be used for humanitarian purposes. The results are the same. Iran knows that it has billions of dollars coming from the U.S., allowing it to spend its own funds on terrorism even if it were to refrain from spending those specific billions on its terrorist activities.
Planned Parenthood uses the same kind of creative accounting methods, but the bottom line is the same. No matter which expense column the funds go into, the federal government is still enabling Planned Parenthood to achieve its primary purpose — performing abortions.
The same can be seen in the Defense Department’s new policy of granting up to three weeks of leave and expenses for servicemembers and their dependents to travel to another state to have an abortion — under the guise of “military readiness.” Since the money isn’t directly used to pay the abortionist, the DoD can claim it isn’t actually paying for abortions — but it’s still using taxpayer money to enable abortion.
That’s why Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., put a hold on military promotions and nominations (though he has since lifted the hold on promotions on three star generals and below). Through its creative accounting, the DoD is violating the law and actually harming military readiness. The military takes an oath to not only protect the nation from physical harm but also to defend the Constitution — but you cannot defend the law by breaking it.
Going back to Planned Parenthood and its ability to milk the federal system, keep in mind how many of those taxpayer dollars are used to lobby on behalf of the abortion business. In the 2022 midterm elections Planned Parenthood spent $50 million lobbying. That lobbying pays off not only in getting more federal funds, but in shaping laws regarding abortion. As constitutional amendments for abortion rights in different states continue to come up for a vote, a challenge pro-life groups will continue to face is the massive funding advantage pro-aborts have in promoting those amendments. Planned Parenthood already receives large private donations and business profits, but they’ve also managed to rope the hard-earned dollars of unwilling taxpayers into their scheme.
Congress needs to step up in their constitutional duty and do a better job of overseeing the money they appropriate. Lawmakers must insist that executive agencies follow not just the letter of the law but the spirit of the law and spend their funds accordingly. And if they did, then Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses wouldn’t receive one more cent of taxpayers’ money.
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