Planned Parenthood Slush Fund

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America is a near-billion-dollar organization, the nation’s number one abortion merchant, and maybe the world’s largest as well.

It is also a major consumer of tax dollars, more than $300 million in 2006, with the Democratic Congress poised to give them even more. One of the biggest programs that pumps your taxes to Planned Parenthood is Title X of the Public Health Service Act.

It underwrites birth control clinics and helps to expand Planned Parenthood’s access to teenagers, whose patronage it needs by the hundreds of thousands each year to solve rapid patient turnover. Over the years Title X has been at the center of a tug of war.

President Reagan zeroed it out. He made sure it didn’t include any abortion referrals and that birth control clinics and abortion shops couldn’t share facilities.

When President Clinton took office, he allowed shared facilities and made abortion referrals mandatory. Pro-life Americans have long asked the Bush Administration to reverse this Clinton-era distortion of the law.

Seven years into the Bush presidency, Planned Parenthood still has its money and its mandate.

Tony Perkins is the president of the Family Research Council. This op-ed is excerpted from the Washington Update that he compiles for the FRC.