Planned Parenthood Shows Its True Colors and Abandons the Title X Family Planning Program

P1130024. Unlabeled pro-abortion rally by ProgressOhio, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

Planned Parenthood showed its true colors yesterday. In a hastily arranged meeting, the Planned Parenthood board of directors fired pro-abort absolutist Leana Wen for being too moderate. She’d tried to rebrand Planned Parenthood from abortion mill into provider of health care services to women and she vocalized the radical position that only women could have babies which really torqued the anti-science left. (See Kira Davis’s Breaking: Planned Parenthood Terminates Director Leana Wen.)

The second thing that happened was that Planned Parenthood announced that it was leaving the Title X Family Planning program. Title X is a program that really shouldn’t exist and seems to have more in common with Margaret Sanger’s desire that the lower orders don’t reproduce in excess than it does with any legitimate federal interest. Regardless, Planned Parenthood had been at this trough. Even though federal regulations forbid the use of Title X funds for abortions, Planned Parenthood used the free health care as a marketing gimmick to draw in women, many of whom were pregnant, and up-sell them on getting an abortion. In short, Planned Parenthood used federal money to market its core service. The federal dollars that can’t be used for abortion helped pay the overhead expenses of dual-use facilities and the salaries of people who worked there.

Last May, Trump’s HHS reissued Reagan-era regulations (see Trump Administration Will Use A Reagan-Era Rule To Strike At Planned Parenthood’s Federal Gravy Train), which were never implemented because they were still being challenged in court when Bill Clinton won the White House which say that Title X grantees can’t share staff or facilities or corporate structure with any entity that provides abortion.

Planned Parenthood immediately toddled off to find a tame judge (Michael J. McShane, an Obama judge…and yes, Justice Roberts, there are Obama judges) in the tamest circuit (Ninth) in the nation who dutifully issued an injunction.

The only problem was that these regulations had been the subject of a Supreme Court case called Rust vs. Sullivan. That decision held:

Section 1008 of the Public Health Service Act specifies that none of the federal funds appropriated under the Act’s Title X for family-planning services “shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” In 1988, respondent Secretary of Health and Human Services issued new regulations that, inter alia, prohibit Title X projects from engaging in counseling concerning, referrals for, and activities advocating abortion as a method of family planning, and require such projects to maintain an objective integrity and independence from the prohibited abortion activities by the use of separate facilities, personnel, and accounting records. Before the regulations could be applied, petitioners — Title X grantees and doctors who supervise Title X funds — filed suits, which were consolidated, challenging the regulations’ facial validity and seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to prevent their implementation. In affirming the District Court’s grant of summary judgment to the Secretary, the Court of Appeals held that the regulations were a permissible construction of the statute and consistent with the First and Fifth Amendments.

Held:

1. The regulations are a permissible construction of Title X. Pp. 500 U. S. 183-191.
…
2. The regulations do not violate the First Amendment free speech rights of private Title X fund recipients, their staffs, or their patients by impermissibly imposing viewpoint-discriminatory conditions on Government subsidies. There is no question but that § 1008’s prohibition is constitutional, since the Government may make a value judgment favoring childbirth over abortion, and implement that judgment by the allocation of public funds.
…
3. The regulations do not violate a woman’s Fifth Amendment right to choose whether to terminate her pregnancy. The Government has no constitutional duty to subsidize an activity merely because it is constitutionally protected, and may validly choose to allocate public funds for medical services relating to childbirth but not to abortion.

But liberal judge, liberal state, abortion and YOLO. Who cares about the Supreme Court? Amazingly, the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit did and they set aside the injunction, the case was reheard en banc where the entire circuit agreed with the panel’s decision.

Now Planned Parenthood had to make a decision. Would it follow Wen’s vision of Planned Parenthood caring about women? Or would it follow the desires of its board and only care about killing babies? It has made its decision.

Planned Parenthood on Tuesday said it will forgo federal family planning funds rather than comply with new Trump administration rules that prohibit the organization from referring women for abortions.

The group announced it will no longer participate in the only federally funded program dedicated to providing contraception and other reproductive health services to low-income women, marking a victory for Trump’s conservative base.

Planned Parenthood will continue to offer services at hundreds of its sites across the country, saying it will draw on “emergency funds.” And by eschewing the federal funds, known as Title X, the group can still refer women for abortions.

https://twitter.com/RepCloudTX/status/1151557149954326530

During his campaign, President Trump promised supporters he would “defund Planned Parenthood.”

His Title X regulation blocks organizations that counsel on abortion from receiving any of these federal funds dedicated to family planning. pic.twitter.com/FOzMGqFtQA

— NPR (@NPR) July 16, 2019

In doing so, Planned Parenthood has deprived itself of a revenue stream worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars, it has defined itself and what it believes in. It can no longer hide behind the mammogram lie and the Pap smear lie and the contraception lie. It is standing foursquare for the ability to kill children in utero. This is going to cut into its ability to raise funds. It is going to make it less of a lobbying force. And it is going to make taking on the abortion industry much easier.

But it isn’t surprising. Because Planned Parenthood is chocked to the gills with would-be Josef Mengeles who exult in killing the defenseless under the guise of medicine.

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