Washington, DC:
It’s time to stop the flow of tax dollars to Planned Parenthood, once and for all.
Leaders in Congress and [five] states have rightly begun investigations into allegations that Planned Parenthood affiliates may be illegally harvesting and selling body parts from aborted unborn children. We applaud these leaders for this necessary and appropriate response to the shocking and disturbing undercover video released in recent weeks showing Planned Parenthood executives describing in grisly detail how they procure and sell tiny hearts, livers, and lungs.
It’s clear from the video alone that probable cause exists that the organization which receives over half a billion dollars in taxpayer funding each year has violated state and federal law. The investigations in Congress and numerous states will bring the truth to light and hopefully lead to any necessary prosecution.
But investigations cannot be the last step. National leaders in Congress and in state legislatures across the country must act to end taxpayer subsidies to Planned Parenthood.
In the fiscal year 2013, Planned Parenthood received more than $528 million in taxpayer funding, in the form of government grants, contracts, and Medicaid reimbursements –46% of their total budget. That same year, the ostensible non-profit reported more than $127 million in excess revenue, and had more than $1.4 billion in net assets. Over the past seven reporting years, Planned Parenthood has increasingly performed more abortions – over 300,000 every year – while decreasing provision of other preventative services like cancer screenings.
Our government should use American tax dollars responsibly and for the common good. No matter what one thinks of abortion, American taxpayers’ deserve lawmakers who won’t funnel their hard-earned dollars to groups that are abusing it. Planned Parenthood is in business not to “help women,” but to build an abortion monopoly that benefits its executives and the politicians who keep the dollars flowing, even if it means trafficking human body parts and covering up suspected criminal acts. Planned Parenthood should be held accountable by the same standards as every other corporation or organization. No American should be forced to participate in Planned Parenthood’s corruption.
We ask those who have the prosecutorial and purse power to do the right thing – end public funding of the abortion giant and pursue the legal avenues that should have been explored long ago. Even as investigations proceed, there should be an immediate termination of taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.
We stand united in asking every member of Congress and every state and local government official who supplies Planned Parenthood with taxpayer funding to cease that funding immediately. Not one more penny from one more American’s paycheck should go to Planned Parenthood.
BACKGROUND:
On July 14, the Center for Medical Progress released a video documenting a top Planned Parenthood executive nonchalantly chewing on a salad and sipping wine as she describes with gruesome specificity the process of harvesting and selling aborted baby parts. In between sips, she explains to undercover journalists she thought represented a human biologics company the different price points for various parts – head, heart, liver, lungs– and how Planned Parenthood abortionists can intentionally preserve intact body parts while performing an abortion. The Planned Parenthood executive is asked how the cold economics of supply and demand figure into Planned Parenthood’s calculations during an abortion procedure. “It makes a huge difference,” the executive responded. She then proceeds to explain that “for that reason,” the Planned Parenthood doctors will place the forceps and crush the baby in such a way to preserve the more profitable organs.
Selling body parts from an aborted baby for profit is a federal crime, punishable by up to ten years in prison and/or a fine of up to $500,000. Some of the procedures described in the video appear to be similar to partial-birth abortion, a grotesque procedure which was banned in 2003 with the passage of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003; the Act was upheld in 2007 by the Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart. Planned Parenthood responded to the public outrage generated by the video’s release by stating the body parts were donated with consent of the customers. Yet, despite Planned Parenthood’s claims that they do not “financially benefit” from their sales of baby parts, one of the harvesting companies that works with Planned Parenthood advertises the opportunity for “financial benefits” and says that clinics can expect to be “fiscally reward[ed].”
This isn’t the first time Planned Parenthood has faced accusations of breaking the law, while receiving taxpayer support. For the last several years, a public report has been submitted to Congress detailing 44 known audits and other reviews that show Planned Parenthood’s waste, abuse, and potential fraud of tax-payer dollars (www.investigatetheirplan.org). As of 2014, the total documented waste and abuse by state family planning programs was in excess of $115 million dollars, the lion’s share of which was attributed to Planned Parenthood. The potential fraud included the illegal practice of billing and being reimbursed by Title XIX agencies for medications and/or services provided in connection with an abortion. Other alleged billing violations include overbilling for contraceptives and Plan B products, billing for unnecessary treatments, and billing multiple times for a single visit. How is it that over half a billion in taxpayer money goes to Planned Parenthood every year?
We applaud Congress for the announcement of a congressional investigation of Planned Parenthood and we call on attorney generals to do investigations of Planned Parenthood in their states. These investigations must be thorough, extensive and include not only financial fraud but also possible illegal trafficking in baby parts and possible violations of the federal partial birth abortion ban. We also call on Congress and state officials to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
Planned Parenthood has a track record of covering up rape and suspected sexual abuse of underage girls who seek abortions at Planned Parenthood. Last year, a complaint was filed against a Tempe, Arizona, Planned Parenthood facility for failing to report, as state law requires, the alleged rape of a 15-year-old girl. According to police reports, the Planned Parenthood counselor told the alleged victim and her mother at an abortion consultation that she “did not want the hassle of having to report the assault to law enforcement.” In Colorado, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains recently settled a lawsuit alleging that it performed an abortion on a 13-year-old girl who had been impregnated by her stepfather, without providing the legally required notice to the girl’s parents or reporting the abuse to the authorities. Instead, Planned Parenthood is alleged to have looked the other way, performed an abortion on the girl, and sent her out the door with her rapist stepfather, who continued to sexually abuse her.
Along with China and North Korea, the United States is one of only seven nations in the world that allows for abortions after 20 weeks, an age which scientific evidence has proven that an unborn child can feel excruciating pain. But Planned Parenthood relentlessly campaigned against the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, federal legislation that would prohibit abortions at that precise 20 week mark. While Planned Parenthood opposes all laws and other limits on its abortion profit operation, the exposure of its side business selling baby parts brings its fierce opposition to this law and others like it into clearer focus. The undercover videos suggest Planned Parenthood has engaged in the farming of baby organs from pain-capable children.
As evidenced by the videos, pain, health, and ethics are of little concern to Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is a publicly-funded, billion-dollar abortion empire. As crony capitalists, they are dependent on taxpayer dollars, and thanks to their powerful labyrinth of lobbyists and politicians in Washington and in state capitols across the country, they have been successful, year after year, in obtaining tax-payer dollars to fund their abortion-driven political machine. All the while, Planned Parenthood returned this favor to its political allies by spending millions, exclusively on pro-abortion Democrats, to return them to positions of power.
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The Honorable Edwin Meese III
Former Attorney General
President Ronald Reagan
The Honorable Becky Norton Dunlop
Chairman, Conservative Action Project (CAP)
Former White House Advisor, President Ronald
Reagan
The Honorable Tony Perkins
President
Family Research Council
The Honorable J. Kenneth Blackwell
Chairman
Constitutional Congress, Inc.
Mr. Ed Corrigan
Former Executive Director
Senate Steering Committee
The Honorable Bob McEwen
U.S. House of Representatives
Former Member, Ohio
Mr. L. Brent Bozell, III
Chairman
ForAmerica
Mrs. Marjorie Dannenfelser
President
Susan B. Anthony List
Mr. Michael A. Needham
Chief Executive Officer
Heritage Action for America
The Honorable T. Kenneth Cribb, Jr.
Former Domestic Advisor
President Ronald Reagan
Mrs. Kristan J. Hawkins
President
Students for Life of America
Bob Adams
President
Revive America PAC
Ali Akbar
Senior Advisor
Black Conservatives Fund
Nancy Pfotenhauer
Former White House Economist
President George H.W. Bush
Craig Shirley
Reagan biographer
Diana Banister
President
Shirley & Banister
Robert K. Fischer
Meeting Coordinator for Conservatives of Faith
Kevin Kookogey
President & Founder
Linchpins of Liberty
J. Keet Lewis
Heritage Alliance (c4)
Heritage Alliance PAC
Rod D. Martin
Founder and CEO
The Martin Organization
Sherri Martin
The Martin Foundation
Jerry Melvin
President
Florida Republican Assembly
Shawn Mitchell
National Chaplain
National Federation of Republican Assemblies
Andrea S. Lafferty
President
Traditional Values Coalition
Ron Robinson
President
Young America’s Foundation
Matt Mackowiak
Executive Director
Fight For Tomorrow
Christopher Malagisi
President
Young Conservatives Coalition
Floyd Brown
President
Western Center for Journalism
Star Parker
President
Center for Urban Renewal and Education
Derek McCoy
National Clergy Relations Director
Center for Urban Renewal and Education
C. L. Gray, MD
President
Physicians for Reform
David A. Keene
Opinion Editor
The Washington Times
Mrs. Elaine Donnelly
Founder and President
Center for Military Readiness
Terrence Scanlon
President
Capital Research Center
Donna Rice Hughes
President & CEO
Enough Is Enough
Richard A. Viguerie
Chairman
ConservativeHQ.com
Gary L. Bauer
President
American Values
Jeanne Mancini
President
March for Life Education & Defense Fund
Tom McClusky
Vice President
March for Life Action
Phyllis Schlafly
Chairman
Eagle Forum
Fr. Frank Pavone
National Director
Priests for Life
Jim Backlin
Christian Coalition of America
Melissa Ortiz
Founder & Principal
Able Americans
Amy Ridenour
Chairman
The National Center for Public Policy Research
Phil Kerpen
President
American Commitment
E.W. Jackson Sr.
Founder and President
STAND
Anthony Saliba
CEO
Saliba Venture Management
Abby S. Moffat
Vice President and COO
Diana Davis Spencer Foundation
Jim DeMint
President
Heritage Foundation
Jim Martin
President
60 Plus Foundation
Tim Macy
Chairman
Gun Owners of America
Paul Liberman
President Emeritus
Messianic Jewish Alliance of America
Jenny Beth Martin
Co-Founder
Tea Party Patriots
UPDATED: 2/5/16
[/column]
[column type=”one-half”]
Mr. William L. Walton
Vice President
Council for National Policy
Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin (Ret.)
Executive Vice President
Family Research Council
Mr. Alfred S. Regnery
Chairman
Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund
The Honorable Colin A. Hanna
President
Let Freedom Ring, Inc.
David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
Seton Motley
President
Less Government
Michael Farris
Chancellor
Patrick Henry College
Kelly Monroe Kullberg
The America Conservancy
Dr. Charmaine Yoest, Ph.D.
President and CEO
Americans United for Life
Austin Ruse
President
Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam)
Quin Hillyer
Veteran conservative columnist
LifeZette
Dr. Rick Scarborough
Founder and President
Vision America
Charles J. Cooper
Cooper & Kirk, PLLC
William J. Becker, Jr.
President/CEO/General Counsel
Freedom X
Jason Jones
Founder
Movie to Movement
Willes K. Lee
Vice President
National Federation of Republican Assemblies
Kevin Freeman
Founder
NSIC Institute
Leslee Unruh
President
National Abstinence Clearinghouse
The Honorable Donald J. Devine
Former Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel
Management in Ronald Reagan’s first term
Senior Scholar, Fund for American Studies
EC Sykes
Managing Partner
Aslan Capital Fund
Donna Hearne
CEO
The Constitutional Coalition
C. Preston Noell III
President
Tradition, Family, Property, Inc.
Mario H. Lopez
President
Hispanic Leadership Fund
Sharron Angle
President
National Federation of Republican Assemblies
Robert D. Thompson
Administrator
The Weyrich Lunch
Ron Pearson
Executive Director
Conservative Victory Fund
Gary A. Marx
Senior Partner
Madison Strategies
Bradley Mattes
President
Life Issues Institute
Erick-Woods Erickson
Editor-in-Chief, RedState
Host of The Erick Erickson Show
Penny Nance
President and CEO
Concerned Women for America
Dee Hodges
President
Maryland Taxpayers Association
Honorable Tim G. Echols
Commissioner, State of Georgia
Founder, TeenPact Leadership School
Founder, William Wilberforce Weekend
Ralph Benko
Chairman
The Center for Civic Virtue
Mike Spence
President
Conservative Republicans of California
Dr. James C. Dobson
Founder & President
Dr. James Dobson’s FamilyTalk
Alex St. James
Executive Director
Blacks for Economic Security Trust
The Honorable Walter (Mike) B. Hill
Member (District 2)
Florida House of Representatives
The Honorable Paul Pressler
Past President
Council for National Policy
Col Francis X. De Luca USMCR(Ret)
President
Civitas Institute
Dan Weber
CEO
Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC)
Bob Carlstrom
President
The Carlstrom Group
Mike Stenhouse
CEO
Freedom & Prosperity
Joel Anand Samy
Co-Founder and President
International Leaders Summit
Beverly Gossage
HSA Benefits Consulting
Alan E. Sears, Esq.
President, CEO & General Counsel
Alliance Defending Freedom
The Honorable Belden Bell
U.S. Ambassador (Ret)
Brad Dacus
President
Pacific Justice Institute
Thomas S. Winter
Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
humanevents.com
Bill Pascoe
Antietam Communitions
Susan A. Carleson
Chairman/CEO
American Civil Rights Union
Thomas Donelson
Chairman
Americas PAC
Mathew Staver
Founder & Chairman
Liberty Counsel
(All organizations listed for Identification purposes only)
[/column]
