(The Washington Stand) President Donald Trump plans to deny Planned Parenthood tens of millions of dollars in federal funding, not due to carrying out abortion, but over its support of another controversial political issue, which has pro-life advocates exclaiming, “Praise God!”
The second Trump administration will withhold federal family planning dollars to the nation’s largest abortion franchise and numerous other Title X organizations, as soon as this week, reported The Wall Street Journal on Monday, because they illegally discriminate under the guise of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Such policies would violate numerous executive orders, including the president’s January 21 “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which states federal contractors cannot make hiring decisions based on “race, color, sex, sexual preference, religion, or national origin” and that every contract or grant recipient must “certify that it does not operate any programs promoting DEI.”
All federal contractors lose a combined total of $120 million in funding this year — about half of Title X’s budget. The planned cuts to Planned Parenthood come to $20 million, reported by Laura Kusisto and Liz Essley Whyte at WSJ.
[Click here to subscribe to Pregnancy Help News!]
Such leaks often precede major administration undertakings. A similar memo surfaced in the media days before Trump signed an executive order to take all steps to facilitate the Department of Education’s closure. “HHS is reviewing grantees to ensure compliance with President Trump’s [e]xecutive [o]rders,” a Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson confirmed to Reuters.
The announcement came on an international holiday dedicated to life: March 25 marks the feast of the Annunciation, when the Christian church traditionally celebrates Christ’s conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary.
‘Praise God’ for a ‘courageous’ president
The potential defunding of Planned Parenthood, a decades-long pro-life goal, won strong praise from right-to-life advocates. “Praise God for a president courageous and smart enough to take down this Culture of Death titan,” Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. Lila Rose of Live Action called the action a “HUGE WIN from President Trump!”
Planned Parenthood responded by immediately casting aspersions at the administration’s motives. “The Trump-Vance-Musk administration wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary, and they’ll end people’s access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more to do it,” said Planned Parenthood Federation of America CEO Alexis McGill Johnson, who took a salary of nearly $1 million ($904,014) in 2023.
But pro-life experts say Planned Parenthood hides behind family planning to cover up its main sources of revenue: abortion and transgender injections. “Alexis McGill Johnson claims that the Trump/Vance administration wants to ‘end a person’s access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more to do it.’ Perhaps she should be honest about the ‘and more,’ because the ‘and more’ is killing innocent unborn children and indiscriminately handing out sex transitioning hormones to minors causing permanent damage to their bodies. And the ‘and more’ is the majority of what Planned Parenthood does,” Szoch told TWS. “While they boast of ‘cancer screenings,’ since 1999, ‘breast care’ at Planned Parenthood has dropped 81%.” A former Planned Parenthood CEO, the late Cecile Richards, long misled the public that it performed mammograms. In 2015, Richards confessed to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, under oath, “We do not have mammogram machines at our” business offices.
“In 2022, Planned Parenthood Federation of America [PPFA] committed 392,715 abortions, killing an average of 1,076 babies per day. In 2022, PPFA committed 228 abortions for every adoption ‘referral’ it made. Of PPFA’s 49 affiliates, 45 provide ‘gender-affirming hormone therapy,”” Szoch pointed out. “Far from providing anything worthwhile, Planned Parenthood kills and sterilizes America’s future. And so, it makes sense that the Trump administration, which has prioritized using American’s money to further American interests, is freezing their funding.”
Planned Parenthood has long claimed, if it loses funding, birth control will become impossible to acquire — a proposition skeptics find doubtful. There are more than 10,000 publicly funded contraception providers and family planning clinics in the United States, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, as compared with “nearly 600” Planned Parenthood offices.
Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion franchise, effectively defunded itself for part of the first Trump administration. In 2019, President Trump signed a regulation denying family planning funds to any organization that carried out or referred mothers for abortions. Planned Parenthood — which once adopted the motto “Care. No Matter What” — refused to provide bona fide health care services to women if it meant giving up abortion.
Pro-life advocates have long said the government should not compel taxpayers to fund any procedures carried out at Planned Parenthood. Since money is fungible, any dollar given to abortionists underwrites their activities.
The proposed defunding action, if undertaken, would only affect a portion of taxpayer dollars politicians have funneled to the abortion giant. Planned Parenthood announced in its most recent annual report that it received $699.3 million in taxpayer funding fiscal year and carried out 392,712 abortions in its 2022-2023 fiscal year. One out of every three dollars in Planned Parenthood’s budget comes from the U.S. government.
Tweet This: The potential defunding of Planned Parenthood, a decades-long pro-life goal, won strong praise from right-to-life advocates.
“The Trump Admin has not yet fully defunded Planned Parenthood, just frozen access to $20M. This is a great start, but we have $679M in tax dollars left to go to defund the nation’s largest abortion vendor,” pointed out Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America. “I certainly applaud the Trump Administration for removing any taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, which we should never fund in any capacity. I hope this is only the beginning of stripping them from every single dime they get from the American public,” agreed former Planned Parenthood turned pro-life advocate Abby Johnson. “Women deserve so much better than Planned Parenthood and abortion.”
Planned Parenthood: overpaid fraudsters?
DOGE leader Elon Musk promised to consider defunding Planned Parenthood in a November 20, 2024, op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. More than a dozen employees of PPFA received higher salaries than Dr. Anthony Fauci. The average CEO of Planned Parenthood’s 49 regional affiliates made an average of $352,661 a year — three times the earnings of the average nonprofit CEO, according to a recent study conducted by the American Life League (ALL).
“This is the best cost cutting move by [President] Donald Trump and DOGE,” said Bob Vander Plaats, president of the Iowa-based The Family Leader, on Tuesday.
The New York Times noted Planned Parenthood’s poorly trained workers provide subpar health care services. PPFA front line workers “did not receive adequate training for patient intake, blood draws and other tasks,” reported The Times last month.
Planned Parenthood also stands credibly accused of defrauding the government. The state of Texas filed a $1.8 billion lawsuit against Planned Parenthood for filing “thousands” of erroneous Medicaid claims. Planned Parenthood paid $4.3 million to Texas and federal authorities in July 2013 after internal memos showed the abortion giant defrauding the government by filing phony claims.
PPFA also raided COVID-era programs intended for small businesses, according to senators. On March 7, Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) inquired with Small Business Administration leader Kelly Loeffler about how much money Planned Parenthood received from the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). At least $90.4 million in funding appears to be illegal, according to a 2023 Government Accountability Office report. The PPP restricted its funds to organizations which have fewer than 500 employees, while Planned Parenthood employees 16,000 people, according to Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). “The Biden administration obstructed our investigation of potentially illegal applications of PPP loans to Planned Parenthood entities, and we are confident the Trump administration will provide the transparency the American people deserve,” said Senator Paul.
Any attempt by President Trump to hold federal Title X providers accountable for their use of public money marks a sharp contrast with the Biden-Harris administration, which counseled family planning groups on how adults can to talk to minors about sex behind their parents’ backs. During National Adolescent Health Month, the Biden administration posted a document advising Title X providers “To Ask ‘Are you alone in the room?’ or ‘Can other people hear what you are saying?’” As this author reported exclusively at The Washington Stand:
The written document tells teens who want to “protect their privacy” from their parents “during a virtual visit” to:
- “Take the call in the bathroom, outside, or in a parked car.”
- “Use headphones.”
- “Schedule the call at a time when there are fewer people at home.”
“[P]arents might not agree with some of the things that we’re talking about and some of the services that our patients are looking for,” Safiya Yearwood, a nurse at Baltimore’s Star Track Clinic, told the webinar.
Actions to rein in family planning funds to abortionists, on any grounds, exceed the promises the Trump campaign made the pro-life community in 2024. “We don’t think that taxpayers should fund late-term abortions,” said then-vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance.
This is but one of many Trump executive orders and actions undercutting federal support of the abortion colossus. On January 25, the president reinstated his strengthened Mexico City policy. Trump also withdrew from the World Health Organization, which has promoted abortion globally.
The action, like many others, may face opposition in court. U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson, a Biden appointee, issued an opinion last month that the Trump administration could not deny taxpayer funding to organizations that implement DEI policies, claiming the effort violated the First Amendment.
But those who love the unborn say they will not rest until the federal government ends all financial entanglement with the abortion industry. “Trump must also defund Planned Parenthood, a political enemy against him, preborn babies, and American taxpayers. The abortion industry still relies on Planned Parenthood’s reception of nearly $2 million in taxpayer subsidies every day, amounting to nearly $700 million a year,” said Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins last month, as she announced a six-figure ad buy for a commercial featuring Charlie Kirk.
Editor's note: This article was published by The Washington Stand and is reprinted with permission.
