$800,000 Approved for Planned Parenthood Investigation by Republicans as Defunding Efforts Ramp Up
Leading pro-lifers are vowing this week to keep fighting for the unborn in a new presidential administration as congressional Republicans amp up their investigation into Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion provider.
"Defunding Planned Parenthood, the nation's #1 abortion business, was one of four pro-life commitments President-elect Donald Trump made in a letter to the pro-life movement during the general election," said Mallory Quigley, communications director for the Susan B. Anthony List, a political action committee that works to elect pro-life women to Congress, in an email to The Christian Post Wednesday. "Republicans showed us there is a pathway to doing this and we will be working with the administration and our allies in Congress to get it done."
As noted Wednesday by USA Today, the U.S. House Committee on House Administration voted to approve $800,000 in additional funds for the Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives for their investigation of Planned Parenthood. The 14-member panel, headed by Tennessee Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, was formed last summer after the Center for Medical Progress released a series of gut-wrenching videos showing senior Planned Parenthood officials negotiating over the prices of fetal body parts from aborted babies.
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Pro-life advocates have long argued that in light of such atrocities, the government should strip funding from Planned Parenthood. Efforts to do so have been successful in several states but thus far federal funding of the organization, which accounts for nearly a third of a their operating budget, has remained.
But many are now hoping that will change since Planned Parenthood will soon no longer have an ally in the White House.
"The pro-life grassroots must be involved. Now is not the time for complacency and my hope is that pro-lifers are more fired up than ever to call their elected officials and demand the defunding of Planned Parenthood," Quigley added.
Though Donald Trump's pro-life credentials are considered dubious by some, the Susan B. Anthony List and others are optimistic and intend to hold both the President-Elect and the Republican Congress accountable.
"We call on Congress to follow this proven pathway and send President Trump a reconciliation bill that defunds Planned Parenthood as soon as possible in 2017, and not a moment later," said SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser and Vice President of Government Affairs Hon. Marilyn Musgrave in a letter they sent to every member of Congress earlier this week.
"We must send a strong and early message to pro-life Americans across the country that the Republican-controlled Congress and White House are serious about saving the lives of unborn children and ensuring our tax dollars do not fund organizations that kill hundreds of thousands of unborn babies each year and sell their body parts to the highest bidder."
The Christian Post reported on Oct. 19 that David Daleiden, president of The Center for Medical Progress who spearheaded the effort to expose Planned Parenthood, said regarding companies that had profited off of the sale of fetal organs and tissue that at long last, "[t]he wheels of justice are beginning to turn against Planned Parenthood and their corrupt business partners."
"Planned Parenthood is not above the law, and law enforcement and elected representatives everywhere must now hold Planned Parenthood accountable for their barbaric profiteering off of pregnant women and the body parts of their aborted children," he continued.
