In the earliest days of Donald Trump’s presidency, he and the GOP-led Congress began to wage a war on women’s reproductive rights. He also nominated Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court as a down payment on his campaign promise to overturn Roe v. Wade. However, matters must be moving much too slowly for Trump, who cannot simply outlaw abortion with a whisk of his executive-order pen. So, he decided to make a deal.
Or at least, that’s what Trump is trying to do. The New York Times reports that Trump has informally offered to let Planned Parenthood keep its federal funding if it promises to stop offering abortions. What Trump fails to recognize is that the Hyde Amendment has outlawed the federal funding of abortions for the past 40 years. Planned Parenthood sees Trump’s hand and has swiftly shut down his negotiation attempt:
The proposal, which was never made formally, has been rejected as an impossibility by officials at Planned Parenthood, which receives about $500 million annually in federal funding. That money helps pay for women’s health services the organization provides, not for abortion services.
“Let’s be clear, federal funds already do not pay for abortions,” Dawn Laguens, the executive vice president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said on Monday. “Offering money to Planned Parenthood to abandon our patients and our values is not a deal that we will ever accept. Providing critical health care services for millions of American women is nonnegotiable.”
So in effect, Trump’s implicitly threatening to remove federal funding for crucial healthcare services — including HIV and cancer screenings, low-cost birth control, STD treatment, and family planning — for low-income women and their families. And Planned Parenthood has chosen to roll the dice and hope that their increased level of donations will sustain them if Trump makes good on his vibe.
Trump is currently pro-life, and although his stance has wavered over the years (and sometimes days), he seems keen to please his conservative voting base …. those who would love to see a national Heartbeat Bill become law. This war isn’t over, and Trump is probably tantrum-ing as we speak.
(Via New York Times)