July 6, 2023
If you are a regular reader of Students for Life Action (SFLAction) and Students for Life of America’s (SFLA) blogs, you might recall a 2022 post entitled ‘WHACK-O-MOLE: Tracking the Many Bad Ideas for More Abortion Popping Up Since Roe Collapsed.’
Around this time last year, our roundup demonstrated the many ways in which the pro-abortion party looks to fatten their wallets at the expense of taxpayers and vulnerable Americans – born and preborn.
With Roe in the ash heap of history for the past year, the pro-life movement has taken an offensive approach to combatting the tactics of the abortion lobby. Continue reading for more ways SFLAction and the Pro-Life Generation have stood up to abortion activists in our federal government:
If you need any reassurance that abortion is still very much a federal issue, look no further than the ways abortion funding is woven throughout our budget.
If you think you don’t pay for abortion, think again. While the Hyde Amendment exists to block taxpayer dollars from funding elective abortions, pro-abortion entities such as Planned Parenthood have sought out sneaky alternatives to further their blood money business.
Take recent action by the Biden Administration to change a rule at the Department of Defense (DOD) to expand their healthcare mission from life-affirming to life-ending, regardless of state laws. The Biden Administration has been forcing abortion in the veterans’ healthcare system for the first time in its history. Thankfully, Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and some of his colleagues have been pushing back against this federal and flawed attempt to enable abortion.
It’s not just happening at the DOD, either. The Biden Administration has stacked other federal agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to be led by appointees that push a pro-abortion agenda. As previously reported by SFLA:
“HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra (an attorney known for going after the FDA while acting as the Attorney General of California) pledged to use his office for more abortion through numerous channels … Oh, and did we mention that he now oversees the FDA? SFLAction President Kristan Hawkins and team warned Congress that Becerra should NOT be confirmed because of his abortion activism, and it appears that we were prophetic.
“Becerra started with his favorite Chemical Abortion pills. Why does he love them so much? Well, because the “despicable” Supreme Court ruling made it seem like saying no to abortion at the state level was a choice.
“He also made it clear that pro-life pharmacists better push abortion. This is an attack on pharmacists that has been going on for a while and one which the Supreme Court unfortunately refused to hear.”
(If you’re wondering about Secretary Becerra’s salary to push his abortion agenda as an unelected bureaucrat, some sources say his annual pay is $235,600.)
Another tactic used by the Biden Administration and his proxies is reauthorization of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). This foreign assistance program was first authorized in 2003 and is the U.S. government’s global effort to combat HIV.
While PEPFAR is designed to do good, it too has been manipulated, and many pro-life groups such as SFLAction fear that its funding will further abortions abroad. In a coalition letter to U.S. House and Senate leadership, SFLAction and other organizations stated:
“Many of PEPFAR’s top grant recipients publicly support abortion as a method of family planning. For example, in 2022 the International Planned Parenthood Federation, one of the largest global abortion advocacy groups, announced a partnership with USAID to address “HIV/AIDS, family planning, and reproductive health” in low- and middle-income countries. In another example, the South African based Anova Health Institute, decried laws enacted in U.S. states that designate bathroom use based on biological sex while also promoting abortions to teens as young as 14.
“This comes on the heels of the Biden Administration directives to promote abortion and gender ideology abroad. One of President Biden’s first actions in office was to sign a memorandum reinstituting foreign aid to organizations that promote abortion abroad, including the United Nations Population fund which is complicit in China’s coercive abortion practices. The memo also suggested that efforts to combat HIV/AIDS abroad would be jeopardized unless groups promoting abortion received U.S. foreign aid.”
The letter reminds leaders that taxpayers don’t wish to fund abortion at home or abroad. SFLAction continues to call upon House representatives to block appropriation funding from supporting such activities.
In addition, SFLAction has called upon representatives leading appropriations efforts that control the purse strings of Washington to cut funding for agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration until they can produce a real environmental assessment of the impact of Chemical Abortion Pills and chemically tainted waste in our public waterways.
(CLICK HERE to read more about SFLAction & SFLA’s Campus, State, & Federal Campaign asking, “What’s In the Water?”)
It remains clear that top officials throughout the federal government enable abortion through various methods and agencies. SFLAction, already holding a federal lobby day calling for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, isn’t letting up until true accountability is shown for our federal funds that ought to be revoked from abortion vendors far and wide.