On Monday of this week, President Trump released his first proposed budget. The Fiscal Year 2018 budget was sent to Congress, which will now review and change it. The good news is that the president’s budget reflects many of the principles he promised it would from a pro-life perspective. It:
- Proposes to “prohibit governmental discrimination against health care providers that refuse to cover abortion.”
- Prohibits abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from receiving any funding made available through the Labor, Health and Human Services appropriations bill, which includes Medicaid reimbursements and Title X family planning grants.
- Prevents Immigration and Customs Enforcement from funding abortions for detainees.
- Prevents Washington, DC from funding activities to carry out the DC law legalizing physician-assisted suicide in there.
In addition:
- Funding is not requested for international family planning programs. This account was appropriated at “not less than $575 million” for FY17.
- Funding is not requested for the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). $32.5 million was appropriated to UNFPA in FY17, but the State Department’s Kemp-Kasten determination required those funds to be redirected to other maternal and reproductive health activities.
- The domestic Title X family planning program is level-funded at $286,749,000—the same amount appropriated for FY17.
There will, of course, be much discussion and political hassling over the budget for the next five months or so, but the president has staked out a good place to start.
On Thursday, David Daleiden released the newest in a long string of videos revealing the sordid underbelly of the abortion industry. This particular video (see the Video of the Week) was recorded at a meeting of the National Abortion Federation. The NAF is an organization specifically for abortionists, and approximately 50 percent of its membership and leaders work for Planned Parenthood. There are no pictures of aborted babies or graphic images in the video, but what is there is almost worse. It is a continual display of person after person with absolutely no compassion for preborn human beings. One abortionist from Planned Parenthood Mar Monte describes how “the fetus is a tough little object.” The Supreme Court decision prohibiting partial birth abortion stated that the abortionist could not pull the live baby, by his feet, out of the cervix further than the navel or it would be illegal. Another abortionist from Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast describes how, when she is getting close to the navel, she grabs another forceps to hold the baby in place and starts pulling “a leg or two.”
These are the “compassionate” physicians Planned Parenthood talks about. After seeing all of Daleiden’s videos so far, we have two things to say:
- When will Congress cut off federal funds to this horrible group?
- God bless David Daleiden for revealing the inner workings of the abortion industry, on tape, for all the world to see.