Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocacy organizations received nearly $2 billion in federal funding over a three year span, accordi...
Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocacy organizations received nearly $2 billion in federal funding over a three year span, according to a new government report.
The Government Accountability Office disclosed in a Tuesday report that $1.89 billion in federal dollars was allocated to multiple different pro-abortion organizations, including those that perform abortion, over the three year period from 2019 to 2021. Planned Parenthood received the overwhelming bulk of the sum, a whopping $1.78 billion, during the three-year period, all while it performed 1.11 million abortions.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who requested in January 2022 that GAO produce this report, told The Daily Wire that the staggering amount of funding should shock Americans, whether they support abortion or not.
“We regularly hear from people — whether they’re pro-choice or pro-abortion — they don’t think taxpayer dollars should be used for this,” Blackburn said in a Monday interview. “You’re looking at close to 600 million federal dollars that are going into abortion every single year.”
The revelations come as poll numbers suggest that Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to federal funding of abortion. Three out of five Americans said they are opposed to using tax dollars to pay for a woman’s abortion, according to a January 2023 Marist poll.
While the Hyde Amendment bars the use of federal funds for most abortions, it does not prevent organizations like Planned Parenthood, America’s largest provider of abortions, from receiving those funds if they are earmarked for other purposes.
The report exhibits the limits of executive action when it comes to separating the abortion industry from federal dollars. The Trump administration attempted to end federal funding of pro-abortion organizations in 2017 by establishing the Protect Life Rule, which mandated that all organizations receiving funding through Title X grants intended to assist family planning services must agree to refrain from offering referrals for abortions, and must also maintain both physical and financial separation from abortion providers.
Planned Parenthood refused to comply with the new rule and forfeited the Title X funding, which was the abortion group’s second largest source of federal funding behind Medicaid reimbursements. The GAO report found that Planned Parenthood’s refusal “led almost all affiliates to discontinue using family planning grants under Title X” in both 2020 and 2021. The Biden administration, however, rescinded the Trump administration’s Protect Life Rule in 2021.
In addition to the federal dollars that went to Planned Parenthood, another $2.03 million went to the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF). The international organization operates in 146 different countries and works alongside 150 member associations. The IPPF brags that in 2022 alone, it provided 5 million “abortion services,” an increase of 11% since 2021. The figure includes 14,000 chemical abortions that were facilitated by the federation.
MSI Reproductive Choices, an organization that works in 37 countries and bragged in 2021 that “4 million clients accessed an abortion or post-abortion care with MSI,” received $1.35 million in taxpayer funds. MSI states that by 2030, it hopes to provide a third of abortions in the areas it operates. The organization laid out this goal in a strategy document that says MSI intends to ensure “1 in 3 women who have an abortion will access it from a safe MSI or MSI-supported product or service.”
The report found that another $107.74 million went to “four domestic regional organizations,” which remained unnamed and were identified only as “privately-owned providers of health related services within various regions of the United States.” The report also noted that the groups “operated in a total of eight states during the time frame of this study” and that “the services they provide include sexual and reproductive health-related service.”
The report found that a large chunk of the money sent to Planned Parenthood was “illegally” taken from the Paycheck Protection Program, which was intended for small businesses to keep people employed as the government responded to the COVID pandemic.
“While small businesses struggled to make ends meet during the pandemic, Planned Parenthood illegally siphoned over $90 million from the Paycheck Protection Program,” Blackburn said, noting that the program was “specifically designed to help our mom and pop shops keep their doors open.”
Blackburn’s was joined by 141 other Republicans in Congress in January 2022 when she requested that the GAO produce a report detailing federal funding of abortion advocacy organizations.
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