The New Year is here, and Planned Parenthood officials might be tempted to pop champagne corks and toast their accomplishments. After all, in some ways 2015 was a banner year for Planned Parenthood.
It seemed to have weathered a series of videos showing its senior medical stuff speaking cavalierly and mendaciously about parceling out for sale the organs of late-term babies aborted in its clinics. It evaded a cut-off of non-discretionary dollars in the pre-Christmas omnibus bill adopted by the Republican Congress and shepherded by its new speaker of the House. It even issued a new annual report showing how Planned Parenthood raked in a record amount of taxpayer dollars—$554 million—performing dramatically fewer services than it had just five years ago.
Let the bubbly flow!
Looks Can Be Deceiving
On the other hand, if you are a pro-life organization like ours, you might be tempted to mull over your wine introspectively, wondering what it will take to defeat the abortion giant. You want the omnibus bill, and every spending bill before and after, to deny Planned Parenthood every penny of its federal largesse.
You deplore the defeatist attitude among some Republican members of Congress who have concluded they can never win a confrontation with the Obama administration, despite the president’s evident weakening on issue after issue. You relish the chance to challenge Obama on a decision to veto funding for genuine government needs over Planned Parenthood’s unfettered access to the federal trough.
My organization did and still does relish that chance. We believe we stand better than even odds of winning such a confrontation. Not for ourselves alone, but for the majorities in both houses of Congress who have now stood up, on multiple occasions, and voted to end federal subsidies for Planned Parenthood and to reprogram that money to other providers. A Senate majority—12 more members than ever before—looked at the Center for Medical Progress videos that began last August and decided talk of carrying out late-term procedures by “less crunchy” methods to serve the organ trade was the last straw.
Things Are Getting Real
So here is why it might be wise for Planned Parenthood to replace the celebratory corks. Last week, for the first time since Planned Parenthood began receiving public funds nearly five decades, Congress put a bill on President Obama’s desk that says the flagship abortion promoter is beyond the pale.
It put the onus on the president, who paid a personal visit to his favorite nonprofit and asked God to bless it, for continuing to force American taxpayers to foot the bill for practices that affront the most basic human dignity. It compels the media, or at least its minimally responsible segments, to report a rare presidential veto and why Congress took this unprecedented step via the once-a-year reconciliation process. It might even prompt the media to report again on the arrogance and iciness of a president who was unwilling even to look at the images the Planned Parenthood videos captured: The clinician discussing slicing open a baby’s face to pluck out its brains. The tech declaiming “it’s a boy” as she dissected another unborn child. The references to “crushing above” and “crushing below” the baby’s thorax to preserve commercially valuable tissue.
As 2016 begins, Planned Parenthood is still feeding on the U.S. treasury. But Congress, with courage and conviction, has shown the way forward. A year from now, with a pro-life president and congressional majorities, the smug merchants of death will be off the dole. That’s when I’ll be raising my glass.
