planned parenthood

Colorado Lawmakers Force Taxpayers to Fund Planned Parenthood Bailout

This week, Colorado lawmakers approved Senate Bill 25B-2, which directs state taxpayer dollars to cover up to $4.4 million in Medicaid reimbursements to abortion providers like Planned Parenthood.

The bill responds to the provision defunding the abortion giant in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which became federal law in July.

Though Colorado is facing a $1.2 billion budget deficient, pro-abortion Colorado lawmakers made it clear that fully funding Planned Parenthood with taxpayer dollars is a top priority.

Support for the bill SB 25B-2 split along ideological lines between pro-abortion lawmakers and pro-life lawmakers. In the state House of Representatives, the vote was 43-19 in favor of bailing out Planned Parenthood. In the state Senate, the vote was 23-12.

Planned Parenthood testified in support of the bill, claiming it has canceled nearly 1,000 appointments since July due to federal cuts.

A Planned Parenthood patient gave testimony before the senate committee that her follow-up appointment was canceled after she took the abortion pill. She had to go to urgent care for hemorrhaging.

This individual’s testimony should have been used as evidence of the dangerous risk chemical abortions pose to women, not to support the bailout for Planned Parenthood.

Thankfully, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced in May, the Food and Drug Administration will perform a complete review of the abortion medication mifepristone.

His statement was made in response to the Ethics and Public Policy Center study which revealed nearly 11% of women experience serious or life-threatening adverse effects, including sepsis, hemorrhaging, infection and emergency room visits, within 45 days of taking the abortion pill.

The bailout is especially shocking considering Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report, which revealed the abortion giant pulled $2 billion in revenue for fiscal year 2023-2024.

As previously reported by the Daily Citizen, of that $2 billion, “Planned Parenthood received $792.2 million in taxpayer money through government grants, contracts and Medicaid reimbursements.”

“Over the last three years, the abortion giant has received $1.535 billion from the Department of Health and Human Services through grants and agreements from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.”

Scott Shamblin, the Executive Director of Colorado Right to Life, told the Daily Citizen, “Lawmakers just approved up to $4.4 million a year for Planned Parenthood to provide primary care through Medicaid, even though Planned Parenthood does not actually provide primary care services. With Colorado facing a $1.2 billion budget deficit, this isn’t about healthcare, it’s a political bailout for the nation’s largest abortion business.”

Shamblin also revealed that pro-abortion lawmakers refused to include an amendment to the bill which would have penalized the sale of fetal organs. He insists this shows the “continued and informed consent to abortionists’ backroom organ and fetal tissue trafficking.”

The bailout bill was signed into law on Wednesday, August 27.

Shamblin lamented the action, “There is no world in which taxpayers should be forced by the government to subsidize abortion.”

Many Coloradans agree with Shamblin and find the use of taxpayer dollars to subsidize abortion providers violates their conscience.

Earlier this year, Colorado lawmakers passed HB25-183, which required the state to use taxpayer dollars to cover abortions as part of its Medicaid services. The fiscal note on that measure estimated abortions will cost taxpayers $5.9 million in the first year. Those expenses are separate and in addition to the $4.4 million approved by the legislature this week to cover the federal government’s drop in funding.

Focus on the Family has been working to turn the cultural tide and save mothers and babies from abortion for years. Since beginning the Option Ultrasound Program in 2004, Focus has helped save over half a million lives.

Our goal is to save one million babies by 2025. Just $60 will save a life through Option Ultrasound. Will you partner with us to save lives from abortion?

Additionally, if you are experiencing an unexpected pregnancy and want to learn more about your options, you can visit My Choice Network here.

Related Articles and Resources

My Choice Network

I’m Pregnant, Now What?

Dealing With Unplanned Pregnancy

Become an Option Ultrasound Life Advocate

Stepping Up to Defend Life

Expressing Pro-Life Views in Winsome Ways

Experiencing God’s Mercy After Leaving the Abortion Industry

Prolife Answers to Prochoice Arguments

The Case for Life: Equipping Christians to Engage the Culture

Planned Parenthood Earns $2 Billion Killing Over 400,000 Babies, Annual Report Shows

Abortion Remains Highly Profitable Business for Planned Parenthood, New Annual Report Shows

Gender Ideology Sours Feds on Comprehensive Sex Ed

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ordered 40 states and Washington D.C. Tuesday to remove all mention of gender ideology from their federally funded Personal Responsibility Education Programs (PREP).

The sweeping order could affect whether HHS continues to fund the development and advancement of radical comprehensive sex education (CSE).

CSE programs contend children have “sexual rights.” They deemphasize abstinence in favor of teaching children how to “consent” to and engage in sexual interactions.

According to Stop CSE, an online database that collects and analyzes inappropriate sex ed curricula, CSE programs contain at least one of 15 harmful characteristics:

  • Normalizes child sex or desensitizes children to sexual things.
  • Teaches children how to ‘consent’ to sex.
  • Promotes anal or oral sex.
  • Normalizes or promotes homosexual behaviors.
  • Teaches children they have a “right” to sexual pleasure.
  • Promotes masturbation.
  • Promotes condom use in sexualized or sexually explicit ways.
  • Promotes premature sexual autonomy by teaching children they can meaningfully consent to sexual activity.
  • Fails to emphasize abstinence.
  • Normalizes or promotes gender ideology.
  • Promotes contraception or abortion to children.
  • Instructs children to teach each other about sex and sexual pleasure.
  • Undermines traditional value systems.
  • Undermines parents and parental rights, including by normalizing kids hiding medical care and sexual activity from their parents.
  • Refers children to harmful outside resources like Planned Parenthood.

California’s PREP program uses four CSE curricula. Three — ¡Cuidate!, Sexual Health and Adolescent Risk Prevention (SHARP) and Making Proud Choices — are federally approved Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) programs. Governments and non-profits that teach these materials can receive federal TPP grants from HHS.

Just last week, however, HHS axed California’s PREP grants after finding its curricula contained “delusional” gender ideology. The department included several examples of California’s “disturbing and egregious abuse of federal funds” in its termination letter, including [teaching] curricula promoting or normalizing:

  • Transgender medical interventions
  • Differentiation between “sex” and “gender identity.”

¡Cuidate! and Making Proud Choices include all 15 harmful elements of CSE, including normalizing homosexual behaviors and gender ideology.

Of Making Proud Choices, Stop CSE writes,

Making Proud Choices is essentially a how-to manual for sexual activity. It implies that many, if not most, teenagers are sexually active and teaches them how to negotiate condom use and obtain consent for sex.

[It] promotes acceptance of diverse sexual orientations and gender-identities and even contains same-sex role play scenarios for teens to act out.

If this material does not qualify for PREP funding, as HHS has (rightly) determined, it shouldn’t qualify for any federal funding — including TPP grants.

This is especially important given organizations like Planned Parenthood use TPP grants to bilk taxpayers.

In 2023, HHS awarded five Planned Parenthood affiliates TPP grants worth $9.6 million, which they used to implement and advance CSE.  

Controlling sex education is a key part of Planned Parenthood’s government-funded abortion pipeline: Taxpayers pay Planned Parenthood to teach kids how to have sex through TPP grants. Then, they pay Planned Parenthood to treat young people’s STDs and kill their unplanned babies through Title X “family planning” grants.

The Trump administration has made great strides toward dismantling this apparatus. In March, HHS froze all Title X grants to Planned Parenthood pending an investigation into its “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” policies.

More recently, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included a provision effectively stripping Planned Parenthood of Medicaid funds for one year.

Now, HHS’ crackdown on gender ideology in PREP programs could be a step toward removing federal support for CSE altogether — and, by extension, radical organizations seeking to mold children’s sexual identities.

That’s great news for Christians, families and taxpayers alike.

Additional Articles and Resources

Feds Order States: Stop using taxes to teach ‘delusional’ gender ideology

Trump Admin Tells California: Remove ‘Gender Ideology’ From Education Program

Twenty-Three States Sue to Stop Defunding of Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood Receives Millions of Dollars Through Federal ‘Family Planning’ Grants

Planned Parenthood Uses Taxes to Pay for Abortion, Radical Sex Ed

BREAKING: Trump Administration Moves to Freeze, Cut Funding to Planned Parenthood

Sexualizing Schoolchildren: Comprehensive Sex Ed

Pro-Life Win: US Supreme Court Clears Path to Defund Planned Parenthood

In a significant victory for the pro-life movement, the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of South Carolina’s plan to defund Planned Parenthood, creating a pathway for other states and Congress to finally stop using taxpayer dollars to subsidize Planned Parenthood.

This decision affirms state governments, and even the federal government, have the authority to define a qualified medical provider and confirms Medicaid recipients can’t sue to block those decision.

Background

The case, Medina v. Planned Parenthood, concerns South Carolina’s decision to withhold Medicaid tax dollars from abortion providers.

As reported by the Daily Citizen, the case originated with an executive order South Carolina’s governor issued in 2018, which prohibited abortion clinics from participating in the state’s Medicaid program.

Planned Parenthood sued the state on behalf of Medicaid recipients, claiming they have a judicially enforceable “right” to choose which qualified medical providers Medicaid should cover, including Planned Parenthood.

The Court heard oral arguments in April.

Opinion

The majority opinion was authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch and joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh and Barrett.

The central issue in this case was whether the Medicaid Act’s language gives recipients a legal right to sue in court. The majority said no because the language is too vague. If Congress wanted to permit individuals to sue, the Court opined, it would have used crystal-clear “rights” language. In this case, it did not.

The majority also reasoned that, because Medicaid is a spending program, federal agencies are responsible for holding states accountable, not individuals filing lawsuits.

The dissenting opinion was written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan.

Dissenting justices argued that, in their opinions, the statutory language gives individuals the right to sue. They contend that if Medicaid recipients can’t sue in court to defend their rights, they are powerless to challenge the state’s actions.

The case reveals an important philosophical divide within the Court regarding the separation of powers, federalism and the role of the judiciary.

The majority represents a more restrained and limited role of judicial power, requiring unambiguous language from Congress to interpret a private cause of action in federal statutes. The dissent presents a more expansive interpretation of the law and judicial power to infer rights in federal law that may not be explicitly stated.

Impact

Medina is a landmark case because it empowers states and Congress to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers.

Focus on the Family applauds the Court’s decision. This ruling will save women and babies from the tragedy of abortion.

Other states can now look to South Carolina’s law as an example of how they, too, can defund Planned Parenthood at the state level.  

In addition, Congress now has strong legal authority to defund Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers at the federal level.

Now is the time to call on Congress to defund Planned Parenthood. American taxpayer dollars shouldn’t subsidize abortion providers. Contact your senator and representative today.

Planned Parenthood Cashes In on Medicaid Money Meant for Elderly and Disabled, Report Shows

Abortion providers like Planned Parenthood are cashing in on Medicaid money meant for elderly and disabled Americans, a new report from the American Family Association (AFA) shows.  

States receive tens of billions of dollars from the federal government every year to run Medicaid programs; state taxpayers contribute several billion more.

But according to AFA’s “Displacing the Disabled: How Medicaid funds abortion providers and leaves disabled kids waiting,” thousands of Americans and their families across forty states are languishing on waitlists for Medicaid-funded Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS).

State HCBS programs subsidize in-home care for the elderly, disabled and mentally ill. For parents like Anja and Nate Baker, they are a necessity.

The Bakers are proud parents of three boys — six-year-old Locke, four-year-old Herschel and one-year-old Fulton. Herschel suffers from cerebral palsy, epilepsy and several other conditions related to brain injury.

Baker family photo courtesy of Anja Baker

“[Herschel] requires a wheelchair and g-tube feeding and cannot independently sit, stand, use the bathroom or speak,” Anja tells the Daily Citizen. “As a result, he requires around the clock care for all his needs.”

Without Mississippi Medicaid’s Disabled Child at Home program, Anja says she and Nate would not be able to afford the fifteen different medical providers and therapists Herschel needs to thrive.

“As a family, we have reorganized our lives around Herschel’s medical care,” she explains. “Without his Medicaid coverage, we could never afford to care for him.”

With Medicaid’s help, the Bakers get to watch Herschel grow and impact the people around him.

“Herschel loves time at church, especially music and fellowship time with friends.” Anja tells us. “We know he has impacted the faith of many people and will continue to do so as long as he’s able to share his light with the world.”

“We pray that we can keep Herschel’s life as comfortable and joy-filled as possible for as long as the Lord lets us have him.”

Baker boys courtesy of Anja Baker

Families like the Bakers can’t financially, physically or emotionally afford to be waitlisted for Medicaid. But that’s what happens when Medicaid funding is spread across an increasingly broad array of services — including those offered by abortion giants like Planned Parenthood.

AFA’s “Displacing the Disabled” report compiles data on twenty states with HCBS waitlists and abortion providers that accept Medicaid. The findings highlight an unacceptable incongruency: While vulnerable Americans await critical Medicaid support, Planned Parenthood entities and other abortion providers are collecting two streams of government income — federal grants and Medicaid reimbursements.

These funds free up millions of dollars Planned Parenthood and company use not only to perform abortions, but to lobby for pro-abortion policies, indoctrinate children into gender ideology and pay their executives’ six-figure salaries.

“For [HCBS programs] to be deprived of resources while the money instead funds the abortion industry is sickening,” Anja says.

“The abortion lobby sees no value in a child like Herschel; Planned Parenthood would rather see [him] and his school and church friends never born.”

She concludes:

This funding issue highlights a stark reality — the abortion industry neither wants to see disabled children born, nor their lives extended or cared for while they are here.
This contrast [proves] they aren’t just anti-life, they are pro-death.

AFA hopes the “Displacing the Disabled” report and stories like the Baker family’s will hammer home the importance of ensuring welfare programs serve the people who need them most.

“Healthcare resources are not infinite,” Dr. Jameson Taylor, the Director of AFA’s Center for Governmental Renewal explains.  “Medicaid can’t cover everything or everyone.”

He continues:

When you look at the services Medicaid could cover in each state, I believe providing care for vulnerable individuals should be a priority while funneling money to abortion providers shouldn’t be on the list.

The Daily Citizen categorically agrees.

To read AFA’s full report, click here.

Additional Articles and Resources

Senate Unveils Budget Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood

Proposed Budget Bill Defunds Abortion Providers Like Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood Uses Taxes to Pay for Abortion, Radical Sex Ed

Planned Parenthood Receives Millions of Dollars Through Federal ‘Family Planning’ Grants

Planned Parenthood Earns $2 Billion Killing Over 400,000 Babies, Annual Report Shows

Planned Parenthood Offers ‘Sexual Health Resources’ for All, Aided by Sacramento Libraries

Surprise, Surprise — Planned Parenthood Gave Children Explicit Coloring Books

America Needs Convictional Pro-Life Politicians

There’s a full court press on in Washington, D.C. to strip language calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood from the anticipated reconciliation bill.

According to a House Memorandum, Section 44126 “prohibits Medicaid funds to be paid to providers that are nonprofit organizations, that are essential community providers that are primarily engaged in family planning services or reproductive services, provide for abortions other than for Hyde Amendment exceptions, and which received $1,000,000 or more (to either the provider or the provider’s affiliates) in payments from Medicaid payments in 2024.”

This move to defund abortion giants like Planned Parenthood is long overdue – and causing some representatives to second guess their commitment to get the government out of the business of taking pre-born children’s lives.

 “Should pro-life taxpayers be made to pay taxes used for abortion?” asked Focus on the Family president Jim Daly. “Of course not. The greatness of a nation is measured by many things, but especially by how it treats the vulnerable and defenseless. The use of taxpayer money to support the unfettered killing of innocent life is a tragedy beyond qualification.”

That certain politicians might go wobbly on such a foundational issue might be unsettling, but also an all too familiar consequence of elections and poor judgement.

Noah Webster, who was born just prior to the American Revolution, once warned:

[I]f the citizens neglect their Duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the Laws; the public revenues will be squandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizen will be violated or disregarded.

As George Washington was preparing to retire to his beloved Mount Vernon, the nation’s first stated in his famed Farewell Address:

However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.

In other words, unprincipled men (and women) are likely to use taxpayer funds for unscrupulous causes – especially if the people behind those endeavors are bankrolling their reelection efforts.

Our country is in desperate need of representatives who will support the right things regardless of their electoral implications. We need pro-life individuals with conviction who are willing to surrender their seat in exchange for saving and protecting innocent preborn babies.

Organizations like Planned Parenthood don’t deserve one penny of our hard-earned money. Instead, they should be called to account for the millions of innocent lives they have coldly snuffed out over the last decades.

Please call or email your Representative and politely but pointedly ask them to support the inclusion of Section 44126 of the Reconciliation bill that calls for the banning of taxpayer funds for abortion.  

Photo Credit: Columbia Pictures