Trump Moves to Take Away Planned Parenthood’s Federal “Slush Fund”

President Donald Trump (and no small number of Republicans) ran on a platform of denying Planned Parenthood and other abortion facilities the federal funding they have been privy to for years. The GOP-controlled Congress utterly failed to make that dream materialize for the two years they were in power, but now the Trump administration has devised a rule that could finally sever the abortion industry’s access to taxpayer money.

Under a new rule for Title X, healthcare clinics will have to prove a clear financial and physical separation between their family planning services and their abortion services if they want to continue to get federal funding. While the rule is certain to be challenged in court, if it is upheld, it could mean the end for Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer-funded adventures.

“None of the funds appropriated for Title X may be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning,” states the rule.

According to Politico, a clinic such as Planned Parenthood will now have to separate their abortion facilities from those that offer traditional healthcare services like cancer screenings and mammograms.

Under the law, healthcare clinics are not allowed to use federal funds to conduct abortions. But realistically, anyone with half a brain knows that this money is fungible. Okay, so you funnel all the funds over to the “mammogram” part of your business. In the meantime, all the money from other sources that would have gone to that side…now gets pushed over to the abortion side. Anyone who thinks this isn’t happening is fooling themselves (if no one else). If it wasn’t, then Planned Parenthood would have no problem with this new rule.

As it happens, they are apoplectic and worried that they will soon lose their federal funding altogether.

Right now, Planned Parenthood gets between $50 and $60 million worth of Title X funds every year. But unless they make deep, substantial changes to the way they do business, that well is about to dry up.

“It is absolutely appropriate that the new Title X regulations take into account the difference between abortion and healthcare. Abortion is neither healthcare nor family planning which is why the Title X program has no business funding it,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said.

A lawsuit is sure to follow; Planned Parenthood isn’t going to take this industry-killing deathblow without a fight. And we’re sure there are plenty of leftist, activist judges willing to give them a favorable ruling. But until that happens, the Trump administration has taken a courageous, possibly game-changing stand against the cruel and vicious abortion industry.