Podcast: Play in new window | Download ()
Subscribe: Android | RSS | More
Joe Biden ran for U.S. president under the pretense that he was not some left-wing ideologue. In fact, his supposed “moderate” views no doubt propelled him to the Democratic Party nomination over avowed left-wingers such as Senator Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). Then, in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election, many were hood-winked into believing he was a safe alternative to President Donald Trump.
On Monday, May 17, many pro-life leaders began to sound the alarm that Biden is proposing changes to the Title X family planning program, which could force pro-life medical professionals to refer patients for abortions.
Denise Harle, the senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), explained: “The current Title X rules ensure that taxpayer dollars don’t fund programs promoting abortion, but the revised Title X rule compromises healthcare professionals’ freedom of conscience by requiring Title X participants to refer patients for abortion and contraceptives. The revised rule targets everyone who believes abortion is not birth control and imposes a one-size-fits-all method of family planning on the public.”
This is yet another example of how many Americans opted to vote for a person (Biden) they maybe did not agree with on most issues, instead of a person they did agree with on most issues (Trump) because they did not like Trump’s style. In other words, choosing style over substance could lead to more unborn children being aborted.
Under the new rule promulgated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in April, the pro-life regulation put into place by Trump is terminated. Trump’s regulation ensured that grants under Title X could not be utilized to have taxpayer dollars promote the killing of unborn babies.
Because Planned Parenthood is in the business of promoting abortion, it gave up about $60 million in family planning funds. Alexis McGill Johnson, the chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood, said that they would rejoin the program as soon as the Biden rule is finalized.
According to the proposed Biden change (a final review is required before it goes into effect), family planning professionals who refuse to refer patients to abortion providers will lose federal funding from the program. Harle said, “The revised rule would force religious family planning providers out of the program because they can’t in good conscience abide by the government mandates.” She added that the rule demonstrates the “hostility towards people of faith” held by the Biden administration.
The law, as passed by Congress, actually forbids the use of funds under Title X “where abortion is a method of family planning.” The stated purpose of the law was to provide “family planning services” to low-income individuals, not to promote abortion as a supposed method of birth control.
Another change made by the Biden administration is nixing the requirement that Title X providers give minor patients practical ways to “discuss family planning with their parents.” Valerie Huber, a former HHS official, said at a press conference held by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (where Harle also spoke) that the new rule abolishes the requirements that encourage “couples to communicate about and to share in family planning decisions together, and provide minors with counsel on how to avoid sexual coercion.”
A recent Marist poll reported that Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion by a margin of 54-39 percent. In other words, the rule from the supposedly moderate Joe Biden is favored by less than 40 percent of the American public.
How does this sort of thing happen? While the pro-lifers mentioned above are certainly right to be disturbed by the pro-abortion position of the Biden administration, no one is actually forced to refer anyone to abortion providers. The rule would simply end federal subsidies of family planning medical professionals who refuse to refer patients for abortion. While the concern of pro-lifers is commendable, the deeper problem is that there is absolutely nothing in the U.S. Constitution that authorizes the federal government to be involved in family planning. There is no enumerated power to take taxpayer dollars and give them to pro-abortion organizations such as Planned Parenthood or pro-life family planning professionals.
This Biden rule is a symptom of several problems, not all of which can be discussed in a short article. One problem is the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, which gave Congress the authority to tax personal incomes. This allowed the federal government the revenue to promote the progressive agenda. Without this power to tax personal incomes, this Biden rule change would be a non-issue, as the federal government would not have the financial ability to fund Planned Parenthood.
These types of issues were wisely left to the states under the Constitution, and this was reiterated in the Tenth Amendment.
Until the American people force their elected officials to respect the restrictions placed upon the federal government by the Constitution, we can expect to see secular progressives continue to take money out of the pockets of productive Americans to promote the killing of the unborn and the rest of the agenda of the secular progressive Left.
