The Trump administration has long been attempting to reallocate Title X healthcare funding so abortion providers are no longer eligible. This move would strip Planned Parenthood of up to $60 million per year and give it to health centers that do not provide abortion.
Planned Parenthood and its leftist allies have repeatedly called this policy a “gag rule.” Planned Parenthood says on its website, “The gag rule is an attempt to take away women’s basic rights … It would make it impossible for patients in the program to get birth control at places like Planned Parenthood.” Additionally, in an article shared by Planned Parenthood’s acting president on Twitter earlier today, the organization’s vice president of public policy and government relations is quoted calling Trump’s policy “illegal.”
By promising to enforce the dangerous gag rule, the Trump-Pence administration is putting health care at risk for millions of patients across the country. But we’re fighting back. #ProtectX https://t.co/Boe5VVap8A
— Alexis McGill Johnson (@alexismcgill) July 25, 2019
All of this is blatantly untrue on several counts.
First, Trump’s Title X policy is not going to “take away women’s basic rights.” It just takes federal funding away from abortion facilities. By no stretch of the imagination is going to an abortion facility to get goods and services on someone else’s dime a basic right.
Secondly, this policy does not “make it impossible” for patients to get birth control from Planned Parenthood. People can still get birth control and everything else they want from Planned Parenthood, they just have to pay for it with their own credit card.
Yes, many of the pregnancy centers that will receive the reallocated Title X funding do not provide birth control, but some of them do. Regardless, you have no right to get birth control at someone else’s expense in the first place. To call yourself “pro-choice” while forcing others to pay for your birth control without having any choice in the matter simply doesn’t make sense.
Planned Parenthood is a private organization. No private organization, abortion-related or otherwise, is entitled to taxpayer funding. If Americans truly rely on Planned Parenthood as much as it claims, the abortion giant will have no problem surviving in the free market.
