The past week has put on full display one of the big lies told by Democrats, Planned Parenthood and others who are defenders of abortion. They call themselves “pro-choice” and say they simply want the government to keep out of women’s healthcare.
While about half the country believes abortion should be legal in many cases, a huge majority of Americans agree that tax dollars shouldn’t fund abortions. The underlying principle here is that abortion is an issue in which the moral faculties, and perhaps religious faith, are intensely engaged, and that no citizen should be forced to fund someone else’s decision to kill her gestating baby.
For Democrats, however, public funding of abortion is a non-negotiable pillar of their party. During budget fights in 2011, Democrats made it clear that the one thing they wouldn’t bend on was subsidies for Planned Parenthood.
But Democrats don’t control government anymore. President Trump on Monday reinstated the Mexico City Policy, which bars foreign aid from funding abortionists. Specifically, U.S. subsidies for family planning organizations overseas. The policy says organizations who want this taxpayer money cannot abort babies or advocate abortion, as some do even in countries where it is illegal.
In short, the Mexico City Policy tries to ensure that taxpayers aren’t unwittingly paying to abort little Nigerian babies or to bankroll abortion lobbyists in the Philippines. President Obama in 2009 rescinded this policy, and Democrats and liberal journalists this week exploded with ire at Trump’s reinstatement of the rule.
But, sadly, the Mexico City Policy doesn’t stop the abortion industry from going about its business or pushing its lobbying agenda. It just tells the abortion industry to do it without public money.
Democrats also unanimously opposed a bill in Congress to stop taxpayer-funded abortions. The “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion and Abortion Insurance Full Disclosure Act of 2017,” passed the House 238 to 183 Tuesday night, with only three Democratic votes.
“No funds authorized or appropriated by federal law, and none of the funds in any trust fund to which funds are authorized or appropriated by federal law, shall be expended for any abortion,” the bill reads. The bill also prohibits Washington, D.C., which the Constitution places under federal control, from using its citizens’ tax dollars to abort babies.
The bill doesn’t outlaw or regulate abortion. It actually gets Uncle Sam out of women’s uteri. It also gives people the choice to fund abortion or not as they wish.
Defenders of abortion recently showed that they can put their own money where their mouth is. At Christmastime, Planned Parenthood announced that donations to the organization increased by 4,000 percent after Republicans won the election.
This post-election surge suggests that federal funding of abortion and abortionists is also a way to help rich liberals skimp on their charitable giving.
Of course, the abortion lobby has a grander cause than that. You can discern their aim from the recent lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The supposed champions of civil liberties sued in an effort to force Catholic Hospitals to abort babies.
The abortion lobby doesn’t want to be left alone at all. It wants the opposite. Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, NARAL and their congressional allies all want to rope the rest of us into their dirty work. What offends them isn’t anyone telling them what to do. What offends them is that any woman should have her hands clean of abortion.
