LIFE DIGEST: House drops provision to benefit Planned Parenthood
- Jun 24, 2008 - 2
The U.S. House of Representatives has eliminated language in a war supplemental spending bill that would have provided price breaks for Planned Parenthood, the country’s No. 1 abortion provider.
Representatives approved the legislation to fund American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan June 19. The House returned the bill to the Senate without an amendment added by senators in their version that would have reinstituted government subsidies for Planned Parenthood clinics, as well as university and community health centers.
The White House had indicated the bill would be vetoed if it included the Senate-approved language, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D.-Wis., said, according to Congressional Quarterly.
Had it been enacted, the amendment would have meant the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), which recorded nearly 290,000 abortions at its affiliates in 2006, would have been able to purchase contraceptives from manufacturers at discounted prices. The drugs covered would have included Plan B, according to pro-life organizations. Also known as the “morning-after pill,” Plan B has abortifacient qualities.
The effort to restore the subsidies came after the Bush administration, acting under a 2006 deficit reduction law, removed about 400 clinics from the list of groups eligible for drug price discounts, Congressional Quarterly reported.
Planned Parenthood already benefits greatly from government funds. PPFA, which surpassed $1 billion in annual revenue for the first time last year, received more than $336 million of that total in government grants and contracts.
Plan B, which is basically a heavier dose of birth control pills, works to restrict ovulation in a woman, but it also can act after conception, thereby causing an abortion. This mechanism of the drug blocks implantation of a tiny embryo in the uterine wall.
Abortion providers face multiple charges
Problems with the law and the medical profession continue to plague some abortion providers.
Bertha Pinedo Bugarin, the owner of an abortion clinic in San Diego (Calif.) County, was arrested and charged June 19 with impersonating a doctor in order to perform abortions, the Associated Press reported. At least nine women said Bugarin, who was charged on 10 felony counts, did medical procedures on them, prosecutors said, according to AP. Some of the procedures failed, and some produced serious complications.
“This defendant preyed on women in the Hispanic community,” district attorney Bonnie Dumanis said in a statement, according to AP. “By passing herself as a doctor, she put these women’s lives in serious danger.”
In Kentucky, the state’s Board of Medical Licensure has suspended the license of a Lexington abortion doctor after he was accused of illegal and unsafe practices, according to a June 18 report by Louisville television station WHAS.
The state attorney general indicted Hamid Sheikh, 62, in November for fraud, alleging he charged abortions to Medicaid while disguising them as fetal sonograms.
Women told the medical licensure board Sheikh did not do ultrasound procedures to make sure they were pregnant and used unsanitary equipment, WHAS reported. Records showed some women did not have to wait the required 24 hours for abortions, according to the report.
Sheikh, who denied the charges, told WHAS he retired earlier in June.
Catholic charity helps girl get abortion
A Roman Catholic charity in Richmond, Va., may have broken a state law in helping an underage Guatemalan girl obtain an abortion.
Officials with Commonwealth Catholic Charities, which has a federal contract to provide foster care for immigrant children, signed a consent form for the 16 year old to have an abortion in January and drove her to the clinic, according to a June 18 report in The Washington Times. Virginia prohibits social workers from giving consent for abortions. The girl’s parents are missing, The Times reported.
Four of the charity’s employees have been fired, and a supervisor has been suspended, according to the newspaper.
Federal officials are investigating, since the girl was a ward of a resettlement program under the Department of Health and Human Services and the charity used government funds in its work, The Times reported.
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2 comments (post your own) feed
1 On Jun 24th, 2008, at 1:39pm, Charles Enlow wrote:
What happened to the move to defund Planned Parenthood altogether?
2 On Jul 8th, 2008, at 3:39pm, Doug Carlson wrote:
Dear Mr. Enlow,
The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission strongly supports defunding Planned Parenthood. In fact, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention’s annual meeting last month approved a resolution calling on Congress to defund the abortion provider. Thanks for your commitment to protect life.