The Des Moines Register had a busy week recently, advocating for continued taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood.
But the paper’s poll, news article, column, and editorial all touting how much Iowans value their taxes paying the nation’s leading abortion provider left out some important details.
On Monday, March 21, the Register printed a letter from The FAMiLY LEADER Communications Director Drew Zahn, who filled in some of those missing facts. Though the Register also edited the letter, and thus diffused some of its impact, the original, full text can be read below:
A poll recently published by the Des Moines Register showing Iowans’ support for funding Planned Parenthood reveals too many Iowans still don’t understand how their taxpayer dollars actually fund abortions in Iowa.
Right now, Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, for example, receives over $4 million annually in state and federal taxpayer dollars through contracts Iowa’s elected officials could cancel, but haven’t.
And we don’t have to send this money to Planned Parenthood. There are over 200 other facilities in Iowa that provide the same family planning and health services, but without abortions. If this issue were really about women’s healthcare, we could fund those, instead of the nation’s largest abortion provider.
Many of our elected officials argue the $4 million isn’t spent on abortion procedures, but this is only a convenient half-truth.
The other half of the truth is that the millions of your dollars that abortionists receive are legally flexible in their use. Which means the money you believe is funding noble causes can just as easily pay the rent and utilities for a clinic where abortions are performed.
So you don’t pay for the abortion; you just pay for the building where the abortions happen. You don’t pay for the machine that dismembers babies’ bodies; you just pay for the electricity that runs the machine.
Regardless of the various programs Planned Parenthood touts to feed its budget on taxpayer dollars, our money should not be used to aid and abet abortion providers.
When literally hundreds of other non-abortive clinics in Iowa provide the same family planning and health services that Planned Parenthood’s 13 clinics in Iowa do, why are we sending the money to keep the lights on at the nation’s largest abortion mill instead?
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