The Trump administration seems intent on keeping its campaign promise of defunding Planned Parenthood. President Donald Trump’s new fiscal year 2018 budget eliminates funding for Planned Parenthood, including Medicaid reimbursements, cutting the abortion giant out of federal programs. The redirection of funds away from Planned Parenthood would send a $422 million increase in federal funding to community health centers.
The Trump administration’s proposed budget specifically excludes Planned Parenthood from all Department of Health and Human Services programs, apparently the first time a president’s budget has done so, according to the leaked executive summary of the plan.
Trump’s proposed fiscal 2018 budget “follows through on a campaign promise and prohibits any funding in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill for certain entities that provide abortions, including Planned Parenthood,” the executive summary says. “This prohibition applies to all funds in the bill, including Medicaid.”
If the budget is approved as is, all this would take effect regardless of the fact that the Hyde amendment (which lawmakers recently voted to make permanent) bars federal funds from going toward abortions. And because about 60 percent of Planned Parenthood’s patients use federal programs like Medicaid and Title X to pay for their non-abortion-related health care, this budget means they’d be forced to go elsewhere.
Planned Parenthood clients, of course, have a myriad of options to receive the same care, minus anything abortion-related. Comprehensive health care can be obtained at the thousands of federally funded health center sites in the United States, which are located not only in the larger cities, but also in rural communities where the abortion profiteer has no presence. In other words, no patient seeking legitimate health care services would be deprived of care from this change. This is something Planned Parenthood knows, and all but admitted last week ,when it began shutting down some of its facilities which didn’t commit abortions.
The Huffington Post notes that “no president has ever attempted to exclude a specific health provider from the entire federal budget.” While this statement is more incredulous than complimentary, it shows the reality of the audacity of the abortion corporation perpetuating itself as legitimate health care provider and the current administration’s ability to see past the hot pink smoke and mirrors to the reality of the many women in need. New York Magazine concludes its story, commenting on the current administration’s goals, saying, “And one of those goals appears to be decimating women’s health care.”
Since the budget doesn’t change access to actual health care, however, that sentence would more accurately be written: “And one of those goals appears to be decimating funding abortion providers, especially at taxpayer expense.”
Executive Vice President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America Dawn Laguens said that “this is the worst budget for women and women’s health in a generation.” Since the abortion corporation receives around a half a billion dollars annually from government funding, to Planned Parenthood, it would, indeed, be the worst budget it has seen in a generation. But Americans tired of funding a rich abortion corporation see it otherwise.
