Three days from now, on January 20, Donald Trump will be sworn in as President of the United States. But the new President’s battle against the Planned Parenthood abortion industry has already begun. Last September, at the height of the electoral campaign, the New York magnate launched a Pro-Life Coalition with American organizations that battle against abortion. Hence the promise to approve the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act law that impedes the practice of abortion on fetuses that already feel pain, blocked up to now by the obstructionism of the Democrats.
And, finally, Trump guaranteed that, once elected President, he would abolish the financing of Planned Parenthood with public funds, hit in the summer of 2015 by a grave scandal connected with the sale of aborted fetuses. After receiving support from outgoing President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Planned Parenthood might now see the end of its El Dorado.
Republican Paul Ryan, President of the House of Representatives, said that such defunding is in a bill now under debate in the Congress.
However, the road is expected to be difficult. According to an annual report presented by the two branches of the US Congress, Planned Parenthood receives funding from several government sources.
According to the organization, 75% of its funding comes from Medicaid, a program to pay the medical expenses of low-income patients.
Another source of funding comes from Title X Family Planning, a government program of birth-control aids for poor families.
This is the core of the problem. The law from which the two programs stem impedes their being modified. In fact, Federal Courts have blocked some States from meddling in Medicaid to leave Planned Parenthood dry of public resources. Texas succeeded in this attempt, where, as a consequence of this legislative initiative, there has been a 1.9% increase in births covered by the health service.
The Republicans will try to follow the Texan example. To do so, they need 51 votes in the Senate, where at present they have 52. However, the risk is strong, in as much as at least three Republican Senators are anything but willing to take up arms against the abortion industry.
Instead, a majority of the American people in fact do not intend to give up their battle against Planned Parenthood. More than 5,000 people took part last Saturday in a Walk for Life, a march held every year in Nebraska to affirm the right to life.
The wind that blew on the marchers whipped their faces and represented, symbolically, the change of mentality that is invading the United States. Interpreted thus is the closing over the last two months of five of Planned Parenthood’s clinics, three in Pennsylvania and two in Massachusetts. According to a press release of the organization, the reason is to be found in the fact that “the needs of patients have changed.”
