Marjorie Dannenfelser–Earth to Congress: Failing to Defund Planned Parenthood Is Not an Option

“Words, words, words, I’m so sick of words, is that all you blighters can do?” Eliza Doolittle asked in My Fair Lady.

Pro-life voters ask the same of Republican leaders in Congress. We helped elect a pro-life President, a pro-life House and a pro-life Senate and who is smiling right now?  Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood.  How can that be?

While many important pro-life legislative initiatives face the hurdle of requiring a super majority to avoid a filibuster in the Senate, it only takes a simple majority to stop taxpayer subsidies to Planned Parenthood through a Budget Reconciliation bill which cannot be filibustered. Yet, after eight months in power, GOP leaders have failed to defund Planned Parenthood.

Pro-life voters and activists have worked long and hard for this moment of possibility. We have proved that opposing abortion is not only the right thing, it is a winning issue. Even Democrats are now admitting they cannot carve a national majority without pro-life voters. Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, admitted Democrats need prolife voters to forge a winning majority.

The pro-life grassroots have worked hard to educate Americans about Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider. Lila Rose’s Live Action demonstrated that Planned Parenthood clinics will cater to sex traffickers abusing underage girls, no question asked. Prolife heroes like David Daleiden risk their freedom to expose the evil Planned Parenthood is doing. (Even the LA Times criticized the 15 felony charges he faces for exposing Planned Parenthood sale of fetal tissue.)

Pro-lifers have exposed the lie that Planned Parenthood is an important provider of women’s health care. Even Fact Check admitted that Pres. Obama was wrong to claim on national TV that Planned Parenthood does mammograms. Live Action recently called Planned Parenthood clinics and found 92 of 97 admitted they don’t do any prenatal care at all. “No, we don’t do prenatal services. I mean, it’s called Planned Parenthood, I know it’s kind of deceiving,” a Merrillville, Indiana Planned Parenthood clinic workers confessed.

Planned Parenthood does not do women’s health care. But Planned Parenthood is big abortion. A recent Charlotte Lozier Institute report found that Planned Parenthood provides just 1% of HIV tests and PAP tests, but dominates the abortion market carrying out over 35% of all abortions in America.

Americans agree: Federal health care dollars are best spent on real community health care centers, not bankrolling the nation’s largest abortion provider masquerading as a woman’s health care provider.

Meanwhile, whether Congress acts or doesn’t, Planned Parenthood is going to raise big bucks to defeat Republicans. Planned Parenthood just pledged $3 million to elect the next Virginia governor, for example. A rich couple (who wished to avoid stigma by remaining anonymous) just gave Planned Parenthood $6.5 million for new abortion clinics. In Denver a series of X-rated sex toy shops have even been set up explicitly to fund Planned Parenthood. “Having a partner like Vibrant is critical to our future,” said Vicki Cowart, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains.

So why are taxpayers still footing a bill for this wealthy corrupt corporation?  The worst of all worlds for the GOP is to face the well-funded wrath of Planned Parenthood without the support of prolife voters, donors and activists.

Planned Parenthood is the swamp. It donates millions to politicians to buy politicians to vote for taxpayer funding, which it spends to maintain the nation’s largest abortion network, which in turn provides services to sex traffickers and  supplements that income by illegally selling off the body parts of the unborn babies it kills.

Here is our message to politicians who campaigned as prolife: Now is the time to show us—and yourself—you meant what you said about valuing every human life. Lives are at stake. Planned Parenthood self-reports taking the innocent lives of 328,348 unborn children each year. That is 900 lives snuffed out before their first breath every single day by a single taxpayer funded abortion chain. The pro-life majority that now controls both chambers of Congress and the White House must pass a reconciliation bill stopping federal funding for Planned Parenthood. If not in healthcare reform, then in tax reform.

If elected officials want prolife voters’ love or our votes: Show us now.