Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin hosted Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) on One America News’ (OAN) On Point to discuss the fight to defund Planned Parenthood.
Black is the author of H.R. 3134, the Defund Planned Parenthood Act of 2015. The legislation, which has the support of over 160 cosponsors, would place an immediate moratorium on all federal funding to Planned Parenthood for the span of one year while Congress conducts an investigation into the organization’s practices.
Referring to Black as a “Mama Grizzly,” Palin asked the congresswoman to discuss her measure.
“We have to just keep having the American people understand what truly is happening,” Black said. “They’ve been sold a bill of goods, a bunch of lies by the Planned Parenthood [Federation of America] and we have just got to make sure people are seeing the heart and the soul of what’s behind that curtain.”
Black continued:
I can’t thank the Center for Medical Progress [CMP] enough for breaking that veil so people can see what [Planned Parenthood is] about. I have a bill that would simply say for one year we are going to place a moratorium on the money that Planned Parenthood gets . . . that money does not get lost. That money goes to other clinics that are providing the services that Planned Parenthood declares they’re providing and in a much larger way . . . In the meantime, we need to investigate Planned Parenthood and really find out what’s going on behind their doors.
Planned Parenthood has come under greater scrutiny over the past month following the release of CMP’s undercover investigative videos that reveal the organization’s top medical directors explaining how they alter the abortion procedure to harvest the body parts of aborted babies so they can then be sold on the open market.
The most recent CMP video also undercuts Planned Parenthood’s narrative that it supplies “women’s healthcare,” as it emphasizes the lack of sanitary conditions in some Planned Parenthood clinics.
The video shows Cate Dyer, CEO of biomedical company StemExpress – a major partner of Planned Parenthood in the harvesting and sale of aborted baby parts – laughing at what she called the “rampant, rampant problems with bacteria in certain [Planned Parenthood] clinics.”
“Somewhere you’re kind of in question of should they really, you, know,” she laughed.
“Now we can assume that President Obama would veto any of your actions to defund,” Palin said to Black. “If Congress can’t override President Obama’s veto of the defunding, as again, we know he’ll probably do because he loves Planned Parenthood, how else can we stop our tax dollars from going there?”
Black explained:
We can do it through the appropriations process as well, and as you’ve already alluded to we have a President who is in love with Planned Parenthood. But Sarah, I have been saying for over 40 years as a nurse that the only way that we’re going to get the people of the country to understand truly what’s happening is to win their hearts and minds. That’s what we’re doing with these videos is that we’re allowing people to see this is not a blob of tissue . . . they are now seeing that if you are trying to harvest a brain, a heart, a lung, you don’t get that from a blob of tissue, you get that from a baby. It is by the American people standing up and just insisting that their dollars not go to these despicable organizations that do the kinds of things that we’ve seen that Planned Parenthood is doing – that’s when we’re going to really change what’s happening in this country with the funding of Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics.
Palin continued the interview by asking Black about Planned Parenthood’s main narrative: that they provide women with services such as medical referrals and birth control.
“[B]ut as you are suggesting surely there are other clinics and even Obamacare that’s providing the same thing,” Palin said. “Are we duplicating services here?”
Black responded:
There is no reason in this world why we should be giving that kind of money to an organization that really is the biggest abortion provider in the entire country when there are other agencies around – state health departments, county health departments – and by the way, they are having to compete with Planned Parenthood for those dollars. They do a wonderful job. I know this because I’ve been in medicine for a long time. I’ve seen the services. Planned Parenthood got called out several years ago when they declared they did mammograms . . . we saw they didn’t do mammograms . . . Let’s take a look at what Planned Parenthood has. They had a surplus of $127 million last year. Why are we giving them federal dollars when they have a surplus of $127 million? It is ludicrous. There are good [health] services provided for women across this country right in their communities. I’ve been a part of it for a long time, I know it, I see it. No longer, by the way, do we give money to Planned Parenthood in the state of Tennessee. We were able to defund them when I was still in the state senate . . . it should be done all the way across this country.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, published August 13, Black said – and reiterated to Palin – that House Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said her legislation would be taken up when the House returns from recess.
“He indicated to me he wanted the committees that have jurisdiction to hold hearings so the House could begin investigations itself, since it looks like we don’t have assurances from Attorney General Loretta Lynch that she will do so, and that this bill will be considered this fall,” Black told Breitbart News. “I’m hoping it will be sooner than later.”
Nevertheless, Black discussed with Palin that Americans must let their elected representatives know they don’t want their tax dollars supporting an organization engaged in these practices.
“Let’s make sure we get as many cosponsors as we can,” Black said. “I have not been shy about asking our leadership when are [they] going to bring this up. I wanted to do this before we left for the August break, but we need to put pressure on our [House] leadership as well.”
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