Washington D.C., Feb 16, 2017 / 03:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The House voted Thursday to allow states to choose not to fund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers with federal dollars, repealing an Obama administration rule from December.
“As a registered nurse, I know that vulnerable women seeking true comprehensive care deserve better than abortion-centric facilities like Planned Parenthood,” Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), who introduced the resolution, stated before its Feb. 16 passage.
Back in December, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule that states cannot deny federal Title X family planning grants to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood simply because they perform abortions.
States, the administration said, could only deny funding to clinics that did not provide the services for which Title X funds are meant.
While federal dollars cannot directly fund abortions, pro-life leaders insist that taxpayer dollars going to the nation’s largest abortion provider Planned Parenthood free up resources for them to perform more abortions.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, called the rule a “parting gift to the abortion industry.”
Black introduced H.J. Res. 43 to repeal the rule, under the Congressional Review Act. The resolution passed the House on Thursday 229 to 188.
The move comes as pro-life groups are reporting poor care and abuses at Planned Parenthood clinics nationwide, from affiliates using taxpayer funds for abortion-related services to many clinics not providing prenatal care to clinics setting monthly quotas for abortions or abortion referrals.
“Planned Parenthood which, according to their latest annual report, performed 323,999 abortions in a single year, does not need or deserve taxpayer dollars,” Dannenfelser insisted.
“We look forward to swift passage of this resolution in the Senate so that it can receive President Trump’s signature,” she said.
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie of The Catholic Association commented: “We applaud the House for voting to rescind a last minute Obama Administration regulation that allows states to take their tax payers’ hard-earned dollars away from the severely limited Planned Parenthood abortion centers and redirect them to comprehensive health care clinics … Passing this resolution lets states fund the health clinics that are true lifelines for poor women.”
Black claimed that states were for decades allowed to pick which health providers they thought were best to receive Title X funds, and that the Obama administration’s rule set “unprecedented new parameters” on states’ use of the funds.
In her state of Tennessee, she said, the state did not cut Title X funds but directed them to county health departments and community health centers.
“We thank Rep. Diane Black (R-TN) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) for leading this measure to restore states’ freedom in choosing Title X providers,” Christie stated. “The Obama Administration’s ruling defies states’ right to choose Title X providers, including the ability to exclude abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.”
States are not cutting health grants, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, insisted, but are redirecting the funds “to other health clinics that provide women’s health care and don’t engage in abortion.”
In issuing its December rule, the Obama administration had claimed that the states’ actions against Planned Parenthood and other clinics had led to “limitations in the geographic distribution of services and decreased access to services.”
However, that was not the case, members maintained on Thursday.
“Prior to the Obama rule, 5 states had chosen to award their Title X funds to non-Planned Parenthood entities,” Smith said. “These five states – Tennessee, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Ohio – account for nearly $16 million in annual Title X funding and serve over 279,000 individuals a year.”
“According to HHS’s own 2015 Title X Family Planning Annual report, our state provided care under Title X to more than 75,000 Tennesseans,” Black stated. “That means we served even more citizens than more populated states like Michigan and Virginia.”
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
.
Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
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Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
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I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?