Donald Trump suggests he’s open to keeping taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood

One week after calling for a government shutdown if necessary to defund Planned Parenthood, presidential candidate Donald Trump has expressed willingness to let the abortion giant receive federal tax dollars for non-abortion services, Breitbart reports.

In an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Trump said Planned Parenthood is “like an abortion factory, frankly” and professed to “feel strongly about” cutting off government funding for abortion. But he went on to say that as president he would “look at the individual things they do… I’m sure they do some things properly and good and that are good for women,” because “we have to take care of women.”

In addition, Trump reiterated his opposition to elective abortion, but clarified that he supports exceptions for rape, incest, and in life of the mother cases.

Breitbart’s John Nolte criticized Trump as accepting “a status quo many conservatives find unacceptable and immoral; also a typical federal government shell game to skirt around the law.” He noted that “If you give Planned Parenthood money for these so-called ‘other things,’ the abortion provider can shift money from those ‘other things’ to abortion.”

Live Action News has previously reported that Donald Trump described himself as “very pro-choice in every respect,” including support for partial-birth abortion, in 1999, but in 2011 claimed to have became pro-life after seeing friends grow to love a child they had initially considered aborting, an anecdote he reiterated in last week’s presidential debate.