If socialism has overtaken the head of the modern Democratic Party, then Planned Parenthood is its heart. We saw that emotional commitment to darkness when every Democrat in the U.S. Senate voted to protect infanticide just last week.
But this week brought news that the passion for Planned Parenthood’s death agenda runs through every artery and vein of the “new” Democrat Party.
Various elected Democrats in Washington, Oregon, Connecticut, New York, and California announced that they were banding together to use taxpayer dollars to defend Planned Parenthood’s access to Title X money in federal court. The level of corruption is just astounding – given that each of these officeholders is the direct beneficiary of Planned Parenthood’s political operation. We have now reached a new low in America – Planned Parenthood doesn’t even have to file its own lawsuits. Debased Democrats will do the work for them, by abusing their offices and taxpayers. What a scandal.
The backdrop for this story is the new rule change President Trump implemented on the use of Title X funds. It enforces a federal statute requiring that agencies receiving Title X funds maintain separate physical facilities if they also provide abortion. That same statute requires that each of the facilities – one offering family planning services, the other abortion services – maintain separate staff. The federal law was intended to get at the on-going problem of taxpayers subsidizing Planned Parenthood’s abortion operations. President Reagan ordered his Department of Health & Human Services to enforce this law. President Clinton revised the rule and officially determined to “look the other way”. And no president, including President George W. Bush, chose to revise the rules and enforce federal law. Until President Trump.
We learned that disturbing history after members of the U.S. Senate – including Idaho’s Mike Crapo and Jim Risch – called on President Trump to carefully review the rules governing Title X because they conflicted with federal law. The Trump Administration has been responded by returning to the old Regan rules, and the rule of law.
The “Reagan Rules”, adopted in 1988, also include a prohibition of any Title X agency from treating abortion as a legitimate method of family planning. That would include abortion referrals from the staff or office of a Title X recipient to the “abortion side” of the building. Planned Parenthood screamed that this amounted to a “gag rule” and, of course, sued.
The good news is that the U.S. Supreme Court has already upheld the old “Reagan Rules” in a 1991 decision (Rust v. Sullivan). Thus, we can be fairly hopeful that the Democrat lawsuit on behalf of Planned Parenthood will ultimately fail.
But how do we address the underlying corruption which animates the Democrat Party?
