Home Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) promised this week that he’ll work to appreciate one in every of Republicans’ long-held objectives: defunding Deliberate Parenthood.
Johnson introduced Tuesday throughout a keynote speech for anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Professional-Life America that President Donald Trump’s financial agenda will embrace defunding “big abortion” — a disparaging phrase utilized by the non secular proper to check with Deliberate Parenthood. Trump’s administration has been working with the Home speaker to wrap his home coverage agenda into “one big, beautiful bill,” because the president typically refers to it.
“In the weeks ahead, the House is gonna be working on the one big, beautiful bill,” Johnson advised the gala crowd. “We’re absolutely making it clear to everybody that this bill is going to redirect funds away from big abortion and to federally qualified health centers.”
That is the primary time since Trump took workplace that Republican management in Congress has explicitly said its plan.
Republicans have been making an attempt to defund Deliberate Parenthood for many years, and the Trump administration has made it clear that one in every of its prime priorities is to slash federal funding for Deliberate Parenthood. Most not too long ago, the administration lower hundreds of thousands in household planning grants to the nationwide reproductive well being group.
“After months of threats and ongoing attacks on Planned Parenthood and the care health centers provide, Speaker Johnson is finally making it plain: President Trump and his backers in Congress are willing to threaten health care for millions of people by shutting down Planned Parenthood health centers and ending vital access to care in communities nationwide,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Deliberate Parenthood, advised HuffPost.
“‘Defunding’ Planned Parenthood would be catastrophic to communities, put countless lives at risk and wreak havoc on our public health system.”
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Deliberate Parenthood has almost 600 well being facilities across the nation, offering abortion and different reproductive well being care to over 2 million sufferers yearly. Since Roe v. Wade fell, some Deliberate Parenthood clinics have struggled financially, and it’s prone to worsen if Johnson’s promise to “defund big abortion” is saved.
Johnson went on to debate the “over 2,700 pregnancy resource centers” which can be “helping more and more women choose life.”
“I’m so grateful that SBA and the Charlotte Lozier Institute have been so instrumental in raising awareness about these important centers, which provide comprehensive care for the vulnerable,” he stated. “And, you know what, they outnumber big abortion providers 15-to-1, so that’s something we can celebrate.”
The “federally qualified health centers” Johnson referred to are anti-abortion being pregnant facilities, typically known as disaster being pregnant facilities, recognized for peddling misinformation primarily based on non secular rhetoric that’s not medically correct. The American School of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines anti-abortion being pregnant facilities as “facilities that represent themselves as legitimate reproductive health care clinics providing care for pregnant people but actually aim to dissuade people from accessing certain types of reproductive health care, including abortion care and even contraceptive options.”
Final month, Trump introduced the administration had lower $65.8 million in household planning grants beneath Title X, a federal program devoted to offering family-planning companies free of charge or discounted costs to about 4 million low-income Individuals yearly.
The funding lower could have devastating impacts on household planning companies throughout the nation, however it’ll hit Deliberate Parenthood notably laborious. The group is without doubt one of the largest Title X suppliers within the nation. Within the month since Title X funding was slashed, at the very least six Deliberate Parenthood well being facilities have been compelled to shut their doorways.
The Trump administration additionally not too long ago joined a Supreme Court docket case alongside South Carolina, arguing that states needs to be allowed to exclude Deliberate Parenthood from their Medicaid applications. If the court docket sides with the Trump administration, Deliberate Parenthood would lose essential Medicaid funds. The lack of Title X funding, together with Medicaid applications, would successfully defund Deliberate Parenthood.
“Federal Medicaid funds don’t pay for abortion except in rare exceptions, but that’s not stopping these lawmakers from going after Planned Parenthood,” McGill Johnson stated. “They’re set on depriving patients — particularly people who already have the hardest time getting health care — of access to affordable cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and treatment, and many other essential reproductive health care services.”
“Nineteen million Planned Parenthood supporters in all 50 states are prepared to fight like hell to stop this egregious attack on their health care and make clear yet again that patients — not the government — should be in control of their own medical decisions,” she stated.
Watch Johnson’s full speech under.
