A couple dozen supporters of Planned Parenthood show up along with a bus the abortion business is driving across the country to defend its taxpayer funding from Congressman Mike Pence.
The abortion advocates blasted the pro-life Indiana congressman outside one of his local district offices in Muncie, Indiana in the eastern part of the state. They’re upset Pence successfully attached his amendment to the House budget bill — although the Senate eventually rejected the legislation.
The pro-abortion stalwarts chanted “Mother, sister, daughter, wife; Planned Parenthood could save your life” and “Women’s health care is a must; Planned Parenthood is there for us” and booed Pence, according to a Muncie Star Press report.
Sen. Sue Errington joined the abortion advocates and accused Pence of wanting to “send women back to the days of barefoot and pregnant.”
“The pill went on the market back in 1960,” Errington said. “Who would believe I’d have to be out here today, 50 years later, to defend access to birth control. And who do you think is leading the charge to send us back to the 1950s? Our congressman, Mike Pence.”
“Mike Pence says he’s a fiscal conservative,” Errington told the crowd, according to the newspaper. “Without Planned Parenthood and the birth control it provides, the unintended pregnancy rate would go up. That would cost the taxpayers of our state an estimated $68 million a year in additional Medicaid birth costs. I repeat: Do the math.”
But Pence spokesman Matt Loyd refuted the claims in an interview with the Star Press.
“The assertion that there will be no organizations to provide health care services to women if taxpayers are no longer forced to subsidize Planned Parenthood is simply not true,” he explained. “As Congressman Pence has repeatedly pointed out, there are literally thousands of clinics across the country other than Planned Parenthood that receive federal funding and offer access to health care for low-income women and families. The congressman simply believes that the nation’s largest abortion provider should not also be the nation’s largest recipient of federal funding under Title X.”
Meanwhile, Pence wrote in an opinion column in the Star Press newspaper giving reasons for his move to de-fund Planned Parenthood.
“I believe that ending an innocent human life is morally wrong. I also believe it is morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans and use them to fund organizations that provide and promote abortions, like Planned Parenthood of America,” he said. “It is for that reason that I offered an amendment to the recent Continuing Resolution that would deny any and all federal funding to Planned Parenthood for the rest of the fiscal year. It passed with bipartisan support.”
“Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. In 2008, Planned Parenthood performed 324,008 abortions, and a recently released fact sheet shows that their abortion procedures increased to a staggering 332,278 in 2009,” he noted. “According to their latest annual report, Planned Parenthood received more than $363 million in taxpayer funds, and it was the largest recipient of taxpayer funding under Title X. While Planned Parenthood asserts that no federal funds are used to provide or promote abortion, a woman entering a Planned Parenthood clinic in 2009 was 42 times more likely to have an abortion than to receive either prenatal care or be referred for adoption.”
Pence also talked about the abuses and problems at Planned Parenthood abortion centers.
“Also, as recent headlines have shown, Planned Parenthood clinics have faced allegations of violating reporting laws in several states, instructing young women to lie about their age to get an abortion without their parents’ knowledge, and have been found civilly liable for failure to report statutory rape,” he said. “Planned Parenthood clinics have also been accused of fraudulent accounting or overbilling practices and in recent weeks, undercover videos showed Planned Parenthood employees apparently willing to aid human sex traffickers by coaching them on how to falsify documents and secure secret abortions for underage prostitutes.”
He concludes: “Especially with this the pattern of apparent fraud and abuse, the largest abortion provider in America should not also be the largest recipient of federal tax dollars under Title X.”
