Austin City Council uses taxpayer dollars to fund group helping minors get secret abortions
Today, the Austin City Council in Austin, Texas, unanimously passed a measure to provide taxpayer funding to an organization that circumvents state law to allow abortionists to commit abortions on teenage girls without parental consent.
It is illegal for a minor to undergo an abortion without parental consent in Texas, and it is also illegal as of September 2, 2019, (through Senate Bill 22) for a Texas state government entity to enter a transaction that would support an abortionist or abortion business. This law was born after the Austin City Council gave Planned Parenthood a government-owned building for just $1 a year in rent for 20 years.
Now, the Council has approved a contract which provides up to $150,000 to Jane’s Due Process, an organization which helps underage girls to obtain abortions, skirting state laws.
Texas Values, a statewide pro-life organization, testified before the council on the matter. Mary Elizabeth Castle, Policy Advisor for Texas Values, told the Council:
Jane’s Due Process believes parental consent laws are a “major barrier” for teenage girls, but in reality, parental consent can help protect minors from sexual abusers. Planned Parenthood, which received essentially free rent from the city for two decades, is also well-known for aiding and abetting sexual abusers and traffickers by neglecting to report potential statutory rape as required by law.
Without parental knowledge of a minor daughter’s abortion, parents will be left in the dark should their daughter suffer ill effects from any of the dangerous risks associated with abortion, including uterine perforation, hemorrhaging, and incomplete abortion. Parents are responsible for their children — including their health and safety — and would be unable to tell EMTs or emergency room staff about the girls’ abortion history. Nevermind the fact that the parents may have been supportive of their minor daughter keeping her baby—but without knowledge of her pregnancy, that opportunity would be lost, and their daughter may suffer from abortion trauma after the fact.
In addition, if a teenage girl has been the victim of sexual abuse, abortion facilities like Planned Parenthood are not so willing to help them, as has been proven repeatedly. When parents aren’t informed before a minor daughter’s abortion, they can’t protect her from any potential abuse that may be occurring.
In short, the Austin City Council has broken a law in order to help a pro-abortion organization break another law and put minor girls at risk — all with taxpayer dollars. “If the city really wants to help women,” said Texas Values Director of Policy Nicole Hudgens in 2019, “they should lower their taxes and stop killing innocent children.”
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