Pro-life lawmakers from across the country are demanding that Congress put an end to federal funding for Planned Parenthood, calling on Republicans to use their “trifecta” in Washington.
The letter, sent to Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson, Idaho Senator Mike Crapo and Kentucky Rep. Brett Guthrie and signed by 183 legislators, urges Republican leadership to include a measure to defund “Big Abortion” in the budget reconciliation bill, which is scheduled for markups on Tuesday. Planned Parenthood rakes in tens of millions from taxpayers every year, according to its annual reports, while performing about 400,000 abortions between 2021 and 2022.
“As pro-life state legislators from across the country who are members of the National Pro-Life Leaders Network, we are deeply concerned with the way that big abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood prey on unborn children and hurt women, all while receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from American taxpayers,” the letter, first shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation, reads. “With a Republican trifecta in Washington, it is time to use the budget reconciliation process to defund big abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.”
The letter also cites several cases of botched abortions that have occurred at Planned Parenthood and deteriorating conditions at the clinics that had disastrous results. In one case, a baby was never removed from a woman’s womb, and the woman later gave birth to the child who quickly passed away, according to The New York Times. At a Nebraska clinic in 2022 an abortion provider neglected to notice a woman was four months pregnant before inserting an IUD, leading her to deliver a stillborn baby just hours later.
“Planned Parenthood has regularly opposed basic health and safety requirements for their facilities, all while providing poor care,” the letter says. “Women deserve better than this. Women and girls can receive better and more comprehensive care at Federally Qualified Health Centers and community health centers that vastly outnumber Planned Parenthoods.”
The state of Missouri is currently suing Planned Parenthood for allegedly helping a man traffic a 13-year-old girl across state lines in order to receive an abortion without her parents’ knowledge.
“Pro life has always been a big issue for me; it’s something I believe down to my very core, and I have always been very disappointed that federal dollars go to support an organization like Planned Parenthood that is happily destroying life and babies,” Republican Pennsylvania Rep. Kathy Rap told the DCNF. ” I believe it is time to send a strong message to our congressional leaders, both in the House and Senate and to the administration, that the majority of the American people do not want to fund Planned Parenthood when women have other resources that they can seek out for funding for prenatal health and maternal health. I do not believe that most of our citizens want to support an organization whose main goal is to perform abortions.”
Planned Parenthood did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
