House Panel on Infant Lives: Defund Planned Parenthood

By 

Jay Sekulow

|
January 5, 2017

4 min read

Pro Life

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Yesterday, the House of Representatives Select Investigative Panel submitted their comprehensive 471 page final report with an array of conclusions, referrals, and recommendations. But one of the clearest recommendations was for Congress to defund Planned Parenthood and make it easier for states to use federal funds to ensure families in need of health care get care at comprehensive community health care clinics that actually provide the health care people need instead of Planned Parenthood clinics that end more than 323,000 lives each year.

The Panel also recommends that Congress take actions to ensure good stewardship of taxpayer funds, including: Defunding Planned Parenthood and ensuring that grants no longer available to Planned Parenthood are awarded to healthcare providers that provide comprehensive preventive healthcare for their patients and that do not perform abortions (that are not covered by Medicaid under the Hyde Amendment); Providing greater flexibility to states to enact laws prohibiting abortion providers form receiving Medicaid reimbursement and giving states discretion to choose subrecipients of Title X funding consistent with state policy…

Chairman Marsha Blackburn stated, “It is my hope that our recommendations will result in some necessary changes within both the abortion and fetal tissue procurement industries. Our hope is that these changes will both protect women and their unborn children, as well as the integrity of scientific research.”

The final report also provided further details and more criminal referrals that we’ve previously written about. The Select Panel’s criminal referrals include:

  • The University of New Mexico was referred to the New Mexico Attorney General for violations of their state’s Anatomical Gift Act for receiving tissue from a late-term abortion facility.
  • StemExpress was referred to the El Dorado, CA DA and the U.S. DOJ for violations of federal law barring profiting from the sale of aborted baby body parts.
  • Found violations by certain abortion clinics and StemExpress of patient privacy rights under HIPAA for financial gain.
  • An Arkansas abortion provider was referred to the Arkansas DA for selling aborted baby body parts to StemExpress.
  • Planned Parenthood of Gulf Coast was referred to the Texas AG for selling aborted baby body parts to the University of Texas for profit.

The report additionally debunked numerous myths perpetrated by Planned Parenthood and its pro-abortion allies, intended to confuse, distort, and manipulate our fellow Americans. The report goes law-by-law, regulation-by-regulation, and case-by-case in order to detail all of its findings and what must be done to ensure our laws are not being broken, lives are being protected, and the abortion industry isn’t profiting from selling the body parts of aborted babies.

While many of the report’s referrals and recommendations are now in the hands of numerous attorneys general offices around the country, one of the recommendations that would make the largest immediate impact is completely in the hands of Congress and the next administration.

In 2016, for the first time in our nation’s history, a bill defunding Planned Parenthood reached the president’s desk. Now, a new budget reconciliation bill currently being considering by Congress to repeal ObamaCare provides a provision to defund Planned Parenthood. Furthermore, the new Congress and new administration have an opportunity to roll back the Obama Administration’s last-minute regulation making it harder for states to defund Planned Parenthood.

Our office on Capitol Hill is working relentlessly to ensure that Congress enacts these measures immediately so that the incoming administration makes good on its promises to defund Planned Parenthood and ensure our taxpayer money is used in community health clinics that truly value every human life.

The House Select Panel on Infant Lives spent hundreds of thousands of hours on determining vital changes that must be made to uphold our laws that protect the sanctity of life. It’s time for Congress to get to work implementing its recommendations.

And there’s no better place to start than by defunding Planned Parenthood.